looking up mime types for files

[Anon]

Is there a php function or other simple way to associate a file's extension with a mime type? In this case, the file is a blob in a database, not a file in the filesystem. I have saved its name and can pull off the file extension, essentially I want to look that up in the mime.types file and use the result to tell the browser what kind of data is coming at it, and decide whether to set my Content-Disposition: header to 'inline' or 'attachment'.

Or if there's a better way...

[Anon]

I save the mime type with the file in the db.

<input type='file' name='file' value=''>

will produce

$file
$file_name
$file_type
$file_size

some browsers do not send files proper, ie. opera, make sure to double check those file_types.

ref: http://www.php.net/manual/en/features.file-upload.php

Chris Lee
[e-mail]

[Anon]

Yeah, I tried it that way before I posted my initial question and found that the browser's mime type was not reliable enough. And in the case of the application I'm writing, the client may not know the type for the file, but the server will.

Furthermore, I can think of cases where a file might get into the database without coming from a browser.

I guess I will just have to parse that mime.types file into an array or a mysql table.

To be more precise, what I want is a function mime_lookup() where I can do:

if ($f_type == "application/octet-stream") {
ereg(".(.+)$", $userfile_name, $crap);
$f_type=mime_lookup($crap[1]);
}

[Anon]

OK, I gave up and wrote the function myself. Q&D hack is available at http://inebria.com/mime_lookup/ for anyone to have.

[updatelee]

make sure your mime.types file is current 🙂 its the only thing I can
recommend. if your looking for a more broad descrip of a file (not
mime/type) try the unix command file

exec("file $file_name", $return);
print_r($return);

Chris Lee
[e-mail]