The mimetypes converts between a filename or URL and the MIME
type associated with the filename extension. Conversions are provided
from filename to MIME type and from MIME type to filename extension;
encodings are not supported for the later conversion.
The functions described below provide the primary interface for this
module. If the module has not been initialized, they will call
init().
- guess_type(filename)
-
Guess the type of a file based on its filename or URL, given by
filename.
The return value is a tuple
(type, encoding) where
type is None if the type can't be guessed (no or unknown
suffix) or a string of the form 'type/subtype',
usable for a MIME content-type header ; and
encoding is None for no encoding or the name of the program used
to encode (e.g. compress or gzip). The encoding
is suitable for use as a content-encoding header,
not as a content-transfer-encoding header. The mappings
are table driven. Encoding suffixes are case sensitive; type suffixes
are first tried case sensitive, then case insensitive.
- guess_extension(type)
-
Guess the extension for a file based on its MIME type, given by
type.
The return value is a string giving a filename extension, including the
leading dot ("."). The extension is not guaranteed to have been
associated with any particular data stream, but would be mapped to the
MIME type type by guess_type(). If no extension can
be guessed for type,
None is returned.
Some additional functions and data items are available for controlling
the behavior of the module.
- init([files])
-
Initialize the internal data structures. If given, files must
be a sequence of file names which should be used to augment the
default type map. If omitted, the file names to use are taken from
knownfiles. Each file named in files or
knownfiles takes precedence over those named before it.
Calling init() repeatedly is allowed.
- read_mime_types(filename)
-
Load the type map given in the file filename, if it exists. The
type map is returned as a dictionary mapping filename extensions,
including the leading dot ("."), to strings of the form
'type/subtype'. If the file filename does
not exist or cannot be read, None is returned.
- inited
-
Flag indicating whether or not the global data structures have been
initialized. This is set to true by init().
- knownfiles
-
List of type map file names commonly installed. These files are
typically named mime.types and are installed in different
locations by different packages.
- suffix_map
-
Dictionary mapping suffixes to suffixes. This is used to allow
recognition of encoded files for which the encoding and the type are
indicated by the same extension. For example, the .tgz
extension is mapped to .tar.gz to allow the encoding and type
to be recognized separately.
- encodings_map
-
Dictionary mapping filename extensions to encoding types.
- types_map
-
Dictionary mapping filename extensions to MIME types.
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