What is MIME type "text/plain"?

What is a MIME Type?

A MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) type is a standard that indicates the nature and format of a document, file, or assortment of bytes. MIME types are defined and standardized in IETF's RFC 6838.

MIME types are important because they help browsers and servers understand how to process a file. When a browser receives a file from a server, it uses the MIME type to determine how to display or handle the content, whether it's an image to display, a PDF to open in a viewer, or a video to play.

MIME types consist of a type and a subtype, separated by a slash (e.g., text/html, image/jpeg, application/pdf). Some MIME types also include optional parameters.

About text/plain

Description

Plain Text

Textual data with no specific format or markup.

Details

MIME Type:text/plain

Specification:RFC 2046

File Extensions:

.txt .text .log .conf .def .list .asc

Usage Examples

HTTP Header

When serving content with this MIME type, set the Content-Type header:

Content-Type: text/plain

HTML

In HTML, you can specify the MIME type in various elements:

<a href="file.txt" type="text/plain">Download file</a>

Server-side (Node.js)

Setting the Content-Type header in Node.js:

const http = require('http');

http.createServer((req, res) => {
  res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'text/plain');
  res.end('Content here');
}).listen(3000);