How do I find the mime-type of a file with php

Question

I have an index.php file which has to process many different file types. how do I guess the filetype based on the REQUEST_URI.

If I request http://site/image.jpg, and all requests redirect through index.php, which looks like this

<?php
   include('/www/site'.$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
?>

Should I test based on the extension of the file requested, or is there a way to get the filetype?How would I make that work correctly?

Answer 1

Hello @kartik,

mime_content_type() is deprecated, so you won't be able to count on it working in the future. There is a "fileinfo" PECL extension, but I haven't heard good things about it.

If you are running on a *nix server, you can do the following, which has worked fine for me:

$file = escapeshellarg( $filename );
$mime = shell_exec("file -bi " . $file);
$filename should probably include the absolute path.

Hope it helps!!

Thank you!!