LWP::MediaTypes(3)

💖 LWP::MediaTypes — bestie edition 💖

okay so this is a page from the User Contributed Perl Documentation, and it's all about LWP::MediaTypes — the little module that guesses media type for a file or a URL. 🦋

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✨ NAME ✨

LWP::MediaTypes — guess media type for a file or a URL 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

use LWP::MediaTypes qw(guess_media_type);
$type = guess_media_type("/tmp/foo.gif");

that's literally it, bestie. two lines and you're slaying. ✨

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🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

This module hands you functions for dealing with media types and encodings — and yes, media types are also known as MIME types, iykyk. 🫶

The mapping from file extensions to media types is defined by the media.types file. But if the ~/.media.types file exists, that one gets used instead. And for backwards compatibility we will also look for ~/.mime.types. 🗂️

The following functions are exported by default:

👑 guess_media_type( $filename )

👑 guess_media_type( $uri )

👑 guess_media_type( $filename_or_object, $header_to_modify )

This function tries to guess media type and encoding for a file, or for objects that support the path or filename method — like URI or File::Temp objects, iconic behavior honestly. When an object does not support either method, it will be stringified to determine the filename. 😌

It returns the content type, which is a string like "text/html". And in array context it also returns any content encodings applied (in the order used to encode the file). You can pass a URI object reference instead of the file name, no big deal. 💁♀️

If the type can not be deduced from looking at the file name, then guess_media_type() will let the -T Perl operator take a look. If this works (and -T returns a TRUE value) then we return text/plain as the type, otherwise we return application/octet-stream as the type. mystery solved bestie 🔍

The optional second argument should be a reference to a HTTP::Headers object, or any object that implements the $obj->header method in a similar way. When it is present, the values of the 'Content-Type' and 'Content-Encoding' will be set for this header. 💖

💜 media_suffix( $type, ... )

This function will return all suffixes that can be used to denote the specified media type(s). Wildcard types can be used. In a scalar context it will return the first suffix found. Examples:

@suffixes = media_suffix('image/*', 'audio/basic');
$suffix = media_suffix('text/html');

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The following functions are only exported by explicit request — so you gotta ask nicely, periodt. 🙈

🧚 add_type( $type, @exts )

Associate a list of file extensions with the given media type. Example:

add_type("x-world/x-vrml" => qw(wrl vrml));

🧚 add_encoding( $type, @ext )

Associate a list of file extensions with an encoding type. Example:

add_encoding("x-gzip" => "gz");

🧚 read_media_types( @files )

Parse media types files and add the type mappings found there. Example:

read_media_types("conf/mime.types");

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🌈 COPYRIGHT 🌈

Copyright 1995-1999 Gisle Aas.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. 💖

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and that's the whole page, bestie — go forth and guess those media types, you absolute icon 👑

mwah 💋 this was perl v5.42.3, dated 2026-09-14, from LWP::MediaTypes(3) — slay, goodbye, no cap ✨🦋💅