Apache HTTP Server Version 1.3

Module mod_mime

Summary

The directives AddEncoding, AddHandler, AddLanguage and AddType are all used to map file extensions onto the meta-information for that file. Respectively they set the content-encoding, handler, content-language and mime-type (content-type) of documents. The directive TypesConfig is used to specify a file which also maps extensions onto mime types. The directives ForceType and SetHandler are used to associated all the files in a given location (e.g. a particular directory) onto a particular mime type or handler.

Files can have more than one extension, and the order of the extensions is normally irrelevant. For example, if the file welcome.html.fr maps onto content type text/html and language French then the file welcome.fr.html will map onto exactly the same information. The only exception to this is if an extension is given which Apache does not know how to handle. In this case it will "forget" about any information it obtained from extensions to the left of the unknown extension. So, for example, if the extensions fr and html are mapped to the appropriate language and type but extension xxx is not assigned to anything, then the file welcome.fr.xxx.html will be associated with content-type text/html but no language.

Note that changing the type or encoding of a file does not change the value of the Last-Modified header. Thus, previously cached copies may still be used by a client or proxy, with the previous headers.

Please note that changing a file's type or encoding does not change the value of the Last-Modified header. Previously cached copies may still be used by a client or proxy.

Directives

• AddEncoding
• AddHandler
• AddLanguage
• AddType
• ForceType
• SetHandler
• TypesConfig

AddEncoding

The AddEncoding directive adds to the list of filename extensions which filenames may end in for the specified encoding type. Mime-enc is the mime encoding to use for documents ending in extension. Example:

AddEncoding x-gzip gz
AddEncoding x-compress Z

Old clients expect x-gzip and x-compress, however the standard dictates that they're equivalent to gzip and compress respectively. Apache does content encoding comparisons by ignoring any leading x-. When responding with an encoding Apache will use whatever form (i.e. x-foo or foo) the client requested. If the client didn't specifically request a particular form Apache will use the form given by the AddEncoding directive. To make this long story short, you should always use x-gzip and x-compress for these two specific encodings. More recent encodings, such as deflate should be specified without the x-.

AddHandler

AddHandler maps the filename extensions extension to the handler handler-name. For example, to activate CGI scripts with the file extension ".cgi", you might use:

AddHandler cgi-script cgi

Once that has been put into your srm.conf or httpd.conf file, any file ending with ".cgi" will be treated as a CGI program.

AddLanguage

The AddLanguage directive adds to the list of filename extensions which filenames may end in for the specified content language. Mime-lang is the mime language of files with names ending extension, after any content encoding extensions have been removed. Example:

AddEncoding x-compress Z
AddLanguage en .en
AddLanguage fr .fr


AddType

The AddType directive adds to the list of filename extensions which filenames may end in for the specified content type. Mime-enc is the mime type to use for documents ending in extension. after content-encoding and language extensions have been removed. Example:

AddType image/gif GIF

Note that, unlike the NCSA httpd, this directive cannot be used to set the type of particular files.

ForceType

When placed into an .htaccess file or a <Directory> or <Location> section, this directive forces all matching files to be served as the content type given by media type. For example, if you had a directory full of GIF files, but did not want to label them all with ".gif", you might want to use:

ForceType image/gif

Note that this will override any filename extensions that might determine the media type.

SetHandler

When placed into an .htaccess file or a <Directory> or <Location> section, this directive forces all matching files to be parsed through the handler given by handler-name. For example, if you had a directory you wanted to be parsed entirely as imagemap rule files, regardless of extension, you might put the following into an .htaccess file in that directory:

SetHandler imap-file

Another example: if you wanted to have the server display a status report whenever a URL of http://servername/status was called, you might put the following into access.conf:

<Location /status>
SetHandler server-status
</Location>

TypesConfig

The TypesConfig directive sets the location of the mime types configuration file. Filename is relative to the ServerRoot. This file sets the default list of mappings from filename extensions to content types; changing this file is not recommended. Use the AddType directive instead. The file contains lines in the format of the arguments to an AddType command:

mime-type extension extension ...

Apache HTTP Server Version 1.3

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