LVIII. Mimetype Functions
Introduction
The functions in this module try to guess the content type
and encoding of a file by looking for certain magic byte
sequences at specific positions within the file. While this
is not a bullet proof approach the heuristics used do a
very good job.
This extension is derived from Apache mod_mime_magic, which
is itself based on the file command maintained by Ian F.
Darwin. See the source code for further historic and copyright
information.
Requirements
No external libraries are needed to build this extension.
Installation
You must compile PHP with the configure switch --with-mime-magic
to get support for mime-type functions. The extension needs
a copy of the simplified magic file that is distributed
with the Apache httpd.
Note: The configure option has been changed from --enable-mime-magic
to --with-mime-magic since PHP 4.3.2
Note: This extension is not capable of handling the fully
decorated magic file that generally comes with standard
Linux distro's and is supposed to be used with recent versions
of file command.
Note to Win32 Users: In order to use this module on a Windows
environment, you must set the path to the bundled magic.mime
file in your php.ini.
Example 1. Setting the path to magic.mime
mime_magic.magicfile = "$PHP_INSTALL_DIR\magic.mime"
Remember to substitute the $PHP_INSTALL_DIR for your actual
path to PHP in the above example. e.g. c:\php
Runtime Configuration
The behaviour of these functions is affected by settings
in php.ini.
Table 1. Mimetype configuration options
Name Default Changeable
mime_magic.magicfile "/usr/share/misc/magic.mime"
PHP_INI_SYSTEM
For further details and definition of the PHP_INI_* constants
see ini_set().
Resource Types
This extension has no resource types defined.
Predefined Constants
This extension has no constants defined.
Table of Contents
mime_content_type -- Detect MIME Content-type for a file
