Change the MIME type of file by using Subversion

MIME stands for “Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. It’s a way of identifying files on the Internet according to their nature and format. For example, using the Content-type header value defined in a HTTP response, the browser can open the file with the proper extension/plugin. Or, if this is a screenshot of plugin which located on WordPress.org repository, then it must be opened in the tab of web browser rather than downloaded to computer. Next, I’ll show you how to set the correct MIME Type of a file using Subversion (SVN) from the command line.

In a Linux system you can use the file tool with --mime-type option to display an existing MIME type of file:

file --mime-type file.txt

file.txt: text/plain

But this article is about Subversion, so let’s do this using SVN tool:

svn propget svn:mime-type file.txt

Or, if you have more than one file:

svn propget svn:mime-type catalog/*

image-1.png - image/png
image-2.png - image/png
image-3.png - image/png

If the MIME type of files is incorrect then you need to set it appropriately.

Change to the proper mime type of the files (for example, png files):

svn propset svn:mime-type image/png catalog/*.png

property 'svn:mime-type' set on 'catalog/image-1.png'
property 'svn:mime-type' set on 'catalog/image-2.png'
property 'svn:mime-type' set on ‘catalog/image-3.png'

Afterwards, commit the changes:

svn ci -m "Modify the mime-type of images"

And here is a list of common MIME types and their corresponding file extensions:

If this article has helped you then please leave a comment

Thanks for reading!