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FindMimeFromData Function

Determines the MIME type from the data provided.

Syntax


HRESULT FindMimeFromData(
    LPBC pBC,
    LPCWSTR pwzUrl,
    LPVOID pBuffer,
    DWORD cbSize,
    LPCWSTR pwzMimeProposed,
    DWORD dwMimeFlags,
    LPWSTR *ppwzMimeOut,
    DWORD dwReserved
);

Parameters

pBC
A pointer to the IBindCtx interface. Can be set to NULL.
pwzUrl
A pointer to a string value that contains the URL of the data. Can be set to NULL if pBuffer contains the data to be sniffed.
pBuffer
A pointer to the buffer that contains the data to be sniffed. Can be set to NULL if pwzUrl contains a valid URL.
cbSize
An unsigned long integer value that contains the size of the buffer.
pwzMimeProposed
A pointer to a string value that contains the proposed MIME type. This value is authoritative if type cannot be determined from the data. If the proposed type contains a semi-colon (;) it is removed. This parameter can be set to NULL.
dwMimeFlags
One of the following required values:
FMFD_DEFAULT
No flags specified. Use default behavior for the function.
FMFD_URLASFILENAME
Treat the specified pwzUrl as a file name.
FMFD_ENABLEMIMESNIFFING
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 for Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) and later. Use MIME-type detection even if FEATURE_MIME_SNIFFING is detected. Usually, this feature control key would disable MIME-type detection.
FMFD_IGNOREMIMETEXTPLAIN
Internet Explorer 6 for Windows XP SP2 and later. Perform MIME-type detection if "text/plain" is proposed, even if data sniffing is otherwise disabled. Plain text may be converted to text/html if HTML tags are detected.
FMFD_SERVERMIME
Windows Internet Explorer 8. Use the authoritative MIME type specified in pwzMimeProposed. Unless FMFD_IGNOREMIMETEXTPLAIN is specified, no data sniffing is performed.
FMFD_RESPECTTEXTPLAIN New for Internet Explorer 9 
Internet Explorer 9. Do not perform detection if "text/plain" is specified in pwzMimeProposed.
FMFD_RETURNUPDATEDIMGMIMES New for Internet Explorer 9 
Internet Explorer 9. Returns image/png and image/jpeg instead of image/x-png and image/pjpeg.
ppwzMimeOut
The address of a string value that receives the suggested MIME type.
dwReserved
Reserved. Must be set to 0.

Return Value

Returns one of the following values.

S_OK The operation completed successfully.
E_FAIL The operation failed.
E_INVALIDARG One or more arguments are invalid.
E_OUTOFMEMORY There is insufficient memory to complete the operation.

Remarks

MIME type detection, or "data sniffing," refers to the process of determining an appropriate MIME type from binary data. The final result depends on a combination of server-supplied MIME type headers, file name extension, and/or the data itself. Usually, only the first 256 bytes of data are significant. For more information and a complete list of recognized MIME types, see MIME Type Detection in Internet Explorer.

If pwzUrl is specified without data to be sniffed (pBuffer), the file name extension determines the MIME type. If the file name extension cannot be mapped to a MIME type, this method returns E_FAIL unless a proposed MIME type is supplied in pwzMimeProposed.

After ppwzMimeOut returns and is read, the memory allocated for it should be freed with the operator delete function.

Internet Explorer 8 and later. FindMimeFromData will not promote image types to "text/html" even if the data lacks signature bytes.

Function Information

Stock Implementation urlmon.dll
Custom Implementation No
Header Urlmon.h
Import library Urlmon.lib
Minimum availability Internet Explorer 4.0
Minimum operating systems Windows NT 4.0, Windows 95, Windows CE 2.12
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Annotations FAQ
Freeing ppwzMimeOut.
The documentation should probably point out that ppwzMimeOut needs to be freed with CoTaskMemFree.
See Also:

This should really be part of the documentation for this function:

"MIME Type Detection in Internet Explorer" http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms775147.aspx

The title of the article is a bit of a misnomer--it specifically deals with how FindMimeFromData() works.

pBuffer must be writable
The buffer pointed to by pBuffermust be writable, or the function will fail/crash. This is not a huge issue, since FindMimeFromData reads at most 256 bytes from it, so you can easily use a stack-allocated temporary buffer