Introduction
The functions in this module try to guess the content type
and encoding of a file by looking for certain
magic byte sequences at specific
positions within the file. While this is not a bullet proof
approach the heuristics used do a very good job.
This extension is derived from Apache mod_mime_magic,
which is itself based on the file
command maintained by Ian F. Darwin. See the source code for
further historic and copyright information.
Requirements
No external libraries are needed to build this extension.
Installation
You must compile PHP with the configure switch
--with-mime-magic to get support for
mime-type functions. The extension needs a copy of the simplified
magic file that is distributed with the Apache httpd.
Note:
The configure option has been changed from
--enable-mime-magic
to --with-mime-magic since PHP 4.3.2
Note:
This extension is not capable of handling the fully decorated
magic file that generally comes with
standard Linux distro's and is supposed to be used with
recent versions of file command.
Note to Win32 Users:
In order to use this module on a Windows environment, you must set the path
to the bundled magic.mime file in your php.ini.
Example 1. Setting the path to magic.mime mime_magic.magicfile = "$PHP_INSTALL_DIR\magic.mime" |
|
Remember to substitute the $PHP_INSTALL_DIR for your actual
path to PHP in the above example. e.g.
c:\php
Runtime Configuration
The behaviour of these functions is affected by settings in php.ini.
Table 1. Mimetype configuration options
Name | Default | Changeable |
---|
mime_magic.magicfile | "/usr/share/misc/magic.mime" | PHP_INI_SYSTEM |
For further details and definition of the PHP_INI_* constants see
ini_set().
Resource Types
This extension has no resource types defined.
Predefined Constants
This extension has no constants defined.