Netscape ENTERPRISE SERVER 6.1, Manual

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Appendix B
MIME Types
This appendix discusses the MIME types file. The sections are:
• Introduction
• Determining the MIME Type
• How the Type Affects the Response
• What Does the Client Do with the MIME Type?
• Syntax of the MIME Types File
• Sample MIME Types File
Introduction
The MIME types file in the
config
directory contains mappings between MIME
(Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) types and file extensions. For example, the
MIME types file maps the extensions
.html
and
.htm
to the type
text/html
:
type=text/html exts=htm,html
When the Netscape Enterprise Server receives a request for a resource from a
client, it uses the MIME type mappings to determine what kind of resource is being
requested.
MIME types are defined by three attributes: language (
lang
), encoding (
enc
), and
content-type (
type
). At least one of these attributes must be present for each type.
The most commonly used attribute is
type
. The server frequently considers the
type
when deciding how to generate the response to the client. (The
enc
and
lang
attributes are rarely used.)
The default MIME types file is called
mime.types
.