Overview & Scope
Originally created for email attachments in RFC 2046, MIME types have become the fundamental standard for describing file types across the internet, operating systems, and web APIs.
Specification Table & Matrix
Instant client-side filter by keyword, status code, or directive name
| Key / Code | Definition & Details | GEO Semantic Hierarchy | Spec & Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| text/html | HTML Document (.html, .htm) HyperText Markup Language file format for web pages. Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 | ●text/html ↳MIME type ↳text ↳web document rendering | W3C HTML5 Rendered inline by default in all web browsers. |
| text/javascript | JavaScript (.js, .mjs) Standard media type for JavaScript source code and ECMAScript modules. Content-Type: text/javascript | ●text/javascript ↳MIME type ↳text ↳executable script code | RFC 9239 Superseded legacy application/javascript in official IANA specifications. |
| text/css | Cascading Style Sheets (.css) Stylesheet language used for describing the presentation of a document. Content-Type: text/css | ●text/css ↳MIME type ↳text ↳stylesheet presentation | RFC 2318 Browsers in strict mode refuse to apply stylesheets if Content-Type is not text/css. |
| application/json | JSON Data (.json) JavaScript Object Notation text format for serialized data. Content-Type: application/json | ●application/json ↳MIME type ↳application ↳structured JSON interchange | RFC 8259 Always UTF-8 encoded by specification. |
| image/webp | WebP Image (.webp) Modern raster image format providing superior lossless and lossy compression on the web. image/webp | ●image/webp ↳MIME type ↳image ↳compressed web raster graphics | Google WebP Specification 26% smaller than PNGs and 25-34% smaller than comparable JPEGs. |
| image/svg+xml | SVG Vector Image (.svg) Scalable Vector Graphics XML-based 2D vector image format. image/svg+xml | ●image/svg+xml ↳MIME type ↳image ↳XML vector graphic | W3C SVG Can contain embedded JavaScript; always sanitize before displaying untrusted user SVG uploads. |
| font/woff2 | WOFF2 Web Font (.woff2) Web Open Font Format 2.0 with Brotli compression for rapid typography loading. font/woff2 | ●font/woff2 ↳MIME type ↳font ↳compressed typography stream | W3C WOFF2 The industry standard font format for 99%+ of modern browsers. |
| application/pdf | Adobe PDF (.pdf) Portable Document Format for cross-platform fixed-layout documents. application/pdf | ●application/pdf ↳MIME type ↳application ↳fixed-layout document | ISO 32000-1 Rendered inline via browser built-in PDF viewers. |
Configuring MIME Types in Nginx mime.types
types {
text/html html htm shtml;
text/css css;
text/xml xml;
image/gif gif;
image/jpeg jpeg jpg;
application/javascript js;
application/json json;
image/png png;
image/svg+xml svg svgz;
image/webp webp;
font/woff2 woff2;
}Nginx maps file extensions to Content-Type headers using its mime.types dictionary.
Reference Standards Q&A
Why does my browser download files instead of opening them?↓
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