MIME::Types and daemons (fork)

If your program uses fork (usually for a daemon), then you want to have the type table initialized before you start forking. So, first call

   my $mt = MIME::Types->new;

Later, each time you create this object (you may, of course, also reuse the object you create here) you will get access to the same global table of types.

Constructors

MIME::Types->new(%options)

Create a new "MIME::Types" object which manages the data. In the current implementation, it does not matter whether you create this object often within your program, but in the future this may change.

 -Option         --Default
  db_file          <installed source>
  only_complete    <false>
  only_iana        <false>
  skip_extensions  <false>
    

Knowledge

$obj->addType($type, ...)

Add one or more TYPEs to the set of known types. Each TYPE is a "MIME::Type" which must be experimental: either the main-type or the sub-type must start with "x-".

Please inform the maintainer of this module when registered types are missing. Before version MIME::Types version 1.14, a warning was produced when an unknown IANA type was added. This has been removed, because some people need that to get their application to work locally... broken applications...

$obj->extensions()

Returns a list of all defined extensions.

$obj->listTypes()

Returns a list of all defined mime-types by name only. This will not instantiate MIME::Type objects. See types()

$obj->mimeTypeOf($filename)

Returns the "MIME::Type" object which belongs to the FILENAME (or simply its filename extension) or "undef" if the file type is unknown. The extension is used and considered case-insensitive.

In some cases, more than one type is known for a certain filename extension. In that case, the preferred one is taken (for an unclear definition of preference)

example: use of mimeTypeOf()

 my $types = MIME::Types->new;
 my $mime = $types->mimeTypeOf('gif');
 my $mime = $types->mimeTypeOf('picture.jpg');
 print $mime->isBinary;
    

$obj->type($string)

Returns the "MIME::Type" which describes the type related to STRING. [2.00] Only one type will be returned.

[before 2.00] One type may be described more than once. Different extensions may be in use for this type, and different operating systems may cause more than one "MIME::Type" object to be defined. In scalar context, only the first is returned.

$obj->types()

Returns a list of all defined mime-types. For reasons of backwards compatibility, this will instantiate MIME::Type objects, which will be returned. See listTypes().

HTTP support

$obj->httpAccept($header)

[2.07] Decompose a typical HTTP-Accept header, and sort it based on the included priority information. Returned is a sorted list of type names, where the highest priority type is first. The list may contain '*/*' (accept any) or a '*' as subtype.

Ill-formated typenames are ignored. On equal qualities, the order is kept. See RFC2616 section 14.1

example:

  my @types = $types->httpAccept('text/html, application/json;q=0.9');
    

$obj->httpAcceptBest($accept|\@types, @have)

[2.07] The $accept string is processed via httpAccept() to order the types on preference. You may also provide a list of ordered @types which may have been the result of that method, called earlier.

As second parameter, you pass a LIST of types you @have to offer. Those need to be MIME::Type objects. The preferred type will get selected. When none of these are accepted by the client, this will return "undef". It should result in a 406 server response.

example:

   my $accept = $req->header('Accept');
   my @have   = map $mt->type($_), qw[text/plain text/html];
   my @ext    = $mt->httpAcceptBest($accept, @have);
    

$obj->httpAcceptSelect($accept|\@types, @filenames|\@filenames)

[2.07] Like httpAcceptBest(), but now we do not return a pair with mime-type and filename, not just the type. If $accept is "undef", the first filename is returned.

example:

   use HTTP::Status ':constants';
   use File::Glob   'bsd_glob';    # understands blanks in filename
   my @filenames   = bsd_glob "$imagedir/$fnbase.*;
   my $accept      = $req->header('Accept');
   my ($fn, $mime) = $mt->httpAcceptSelect($accept, @filenames);
   my $code        = defined $mime ? HTTP_NOT_ACCEPTABLE : HTTP_OK;