How to get MIME type of a file in PHP 5.5? - mime-types

Question

I am using mime_content_type() in PHP 5.5 to get a MIME type, but it throws fatal: error function not found.
How can I achieve this on PHP 5.5?

Answer 1

Make use of the finfo() functions.
A simple illustration:
<?php
$finfo = finfo_open(FILEINFO_MIME_TYPE);
echo finfo_file($finfo, "path/to/image_dir/image.gif");
finfo_close($finfo);
OUTPUT :
image/gif
Note : Windows users must include the bundled php_fileinfo.dll DLL file in php.ini to enable this extension.

Answer 2

I've spent too much time trying to get the finfo functions to work, properly. I finally just ended up creating my own function to match the file extension to any array of mime types. It's not a full-proof way of assuring that the files are truly what the extension denotes them to be, but that problem can be mitigated by how you process I/O of said files on your server(s).
function mime_type($file) {
// there's a bug that doesn't properly detect
// the mime type of css files
// https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=53035
// so the following is used, instead
// src: http://www.freeformatter.com/mime-types-list.html#mime-types-list
$mime_type = array(
"3dml" => "text/vnd.in3d.3dml",
"3g2" => "video/3gpp2",
"3gp" => "video/3gpp",
"7z" => "application/x-7z-compressed",
"aab" => "application/x-authorware-bin",
"aac" => "audio/x-aac",
"aam" => "application/x-authorware-map",
"aas" => "application/x-authorware-seg",
"abw" => "application/x-abiword",
"ac" => "application/pkix-attr-cert",
"acc" => "application/vnd.americandynamics.acc",
"ace" => "application/x-ace-compressed",
"acu" => "application/vnd.acucobol",
"adp" => "audio/adpcm",
"aep" => "application/vnd.audiograph",
"afp" => "application/vnd.ibm.modcap",
"ahead" => "application/vnd.ahead.space",
"ai" => "application/postscript",
"aif" => "audio/x-aiff",
"air" => "application/vnd.adobe.air-application-installer-package+zip",
"ait" => "application/vnd.dvb.ait",
"ami" => "application/vnd.amiga.ami",
"apk" => "application/vnd.android.package-archive",
"application" => "application/x-ms-application",
// etc...
// truncated due to Stack Overflow's character limit in posts
);
$extension = \strtolower(\pathinfo($file, \PATHINFO_EXTENSION));
if (isset($mime_type[$extension])) {
return $mime_type[$extension];
} else {
throw new \Exception("Unknown file type");
}
}
Edit:
I'd like to address Davuz's comment (since it keeps getting up-voted) and remind everyone that I put in the pseudo disclaimer at the top that this isn't "full-proof." So, please keep that in mind when considering the approach I've offered in my answer.

Answer 3

mime_content_type() is not deprecated and works fine.
Why is mime_content_type() deprecated in PHP?
http://php.net/manual/en/function.mime-content-type.php
As of PHP 5.3, it's even built-in.

Answer 4

$finfo = finfo_open(FILEINFO_MIME_TYPE); should do it.
Taken from the php.net docs. Your function is deprecated and probably already removed.
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.finfo-file.php

Answer 5

You should understand that file_get_contents will upload whole file to the memory, it is not good way to get only mime type. You don't need to use buffer method and file_get_contents function in this case.
To prevent any errors and warnings, better do like this.
$filename = 'path to your file';
if (class_exists('finfo')) {
$finfo = new finfo(FILEINFO_MIME_TYPE);
if (is_object($finfo)) {
echo $finfo->file($filename);
}
} else {
echo 'fileinfo did not installed';
}
Also you should know $finfo->file will throw PHP Warning if it fail.
If fileinfo is not installed properly, and you have a fresh version of PHP, you can get mime type from headers.
You can use cURL to get mime type from headers.
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($ch, array(
CURLOPT_HEADER => true,
CURLOPT_NOBODY => true,
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER => false,
CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST => false,
CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,
CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 1,
CURLOPT_URL => $link)
);
$headers = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
if (preg_match('/Content-Type:\s(.*)/i', $headers, $matches)) {
echo trim($matches[1], "\t\n\r");
}else {
echo 'There is no content type in the headers!';
}
Also you can use get_headers function, but it more slow than cURL request.
$url = 'http://www.example.com';
$headers = get_headers($url, 1);
echo $headers['Content-Type'];

Answer 6

Get the image size using:
$infFil=getimagesize($the_file_name);
and
echo $infFil["mime"]
The getimagesize returns an associative array which have a MIME key and obviously the image size too
I used it and it works

Answer 7

I use the MimeTypeTool from Bat (https://github.com/lingtalfi/Bat)
It uses fileinfo if available, and defaults back to an "extension => mime type" mapping otherwise.

Answer 8

This is the best solution I found by combining two very good posts
// Thanks to http://php.net/manual/en/function.mime-content-type.php#87856
function getMimeContentType($filename, $ext)
{
if(!function_exists('mime_content_type'))
{
if($mime_types = getMimeTypes())
{
if (array_key_exists($ext, $mime_types))
{
return $mime_types[$ext];
}
elseif (function_exists('finfo_open'))
{
$finfo = finfo_open(FILEINFO_MIME);
$mimetype = finfo_file($finfo, $filename);
finfo_close($finfo);
return $mimetype;
}
}
return 'application/octet-stream';
}
return mime_content_type($filename);
}
// Thanks to http://php.net/manual/en/function.mime-content-type.php#107798
function getMimeTypes()
{
$url = 'http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/httpd/httpd/trunk/docs/conf/mime.types';
$mimes = array();
foreach(#explode("\n",#file_get_contents($url)) as $x)
{
if(isset($x[0]) && $x[0]!=='#' && preg_match_all('#([^\s]+)#', $x, $out) && isset($out[1]) && ($c = count($out[1])) > 1)
{
for($i=1; $i < $c; $i++)
{
$mimes[$out[1][$i]] = $out[1][0];
}
}
}
return (#sort($mimes)) ? $mimes : false;
}
Use it link this:
$filename = '/path/to/the/file.pdf';
$ext = strtolower(array_pop(explode('.',$filename)));
$content_type = getMimeContentType($filename, $ext);
Will continue to work even if the mime_content_type function is no longer supported in php.