Médiatípusok

Médiatípusok, also known as media types or MIME types, are standardized identifiers used to indicate the nature and format of a document, file, or stream. They are crucial for enabling different software applications to understand and correctly process data. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is responsible for maintaining the official registry of media types.

A media type is typically composed of two parts: a type and a subtype, separated by a slash. For example, text/html is a media type where "text" is the type and "html" is the subtype, indicating an HTML document. Common types include "text" for character-based data, "image" for image files, "audio" for sound recordings, "video" for moving images, and "application" for structured data or binary files that don't fit into other categories.

Subtypes further specify the format within a given type. Examples include "plain" for plain text, "jpeg" for JPEG images, "mpeg" for MPEG video, and "json" for JSON data. Many media types also support optional parameters, such as character encoding for text files (e.g., text/html; charset=UTF-8).

Media types are widely used in various internet protocols, most notably HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) to inform the client about the content being sent by the server. They are also used in email attachments, web browser handling of downloaded files, and other data exchange scenarios to ensure interoperability between different systems and applications. Correctly identifying and using media types is essential for seamless data transmission and processing on the internet.