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

Question

Ok, so 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']);
?>

How would I make that work correctly?

Should I test based on the extension of the file requested, or is there a way to get the filetype?

Answer 1

If you are sure you're only ever working with images, you can check out the getimagesize() exif_imagetype() PHP function, which attempts to return the image mime-type.

If you don't mind external dependencies, you can also check out the excellent getID3 library which can determine the mime-type of many different file types.

Lastly, you can check out the mime_content_type() function - but it has been deprecated for the Fileinfo PECL extension.