package type-beat

  1. Overview
  2. Docs
package type-beat
Legend:
Library
Module
Module type
Parameter
Class
Class type

Module Content-Type

The purpose of the "Content-Type" field is to describe the data contained in the body fully enough that the receiving user agent can pick an appropriate agent or mechanism to present the date to the user, or otherwise deal with the data in an appropriate manner. The value in this field is called a media type.

The "Content-Type" header field specifies the nature of the data in the body of an entity by giving media type and subtype identifiers, and by providing auxiliary information that may be required for certain media types. After the media type and subtype names, the remainder of the header field is simply a set of parameters, specified in a "attribute=value" notation. The ordering of parameters is not significant.

type ty = [
  1. | `Application
  2. | `Audio
  3. | `Ietf_token of string
  4. | `Image
  5. | `Message
  6. | `Multipart
  7. | `Text
  8. | `Video
  9. | `X_token of string
]

In general, the top-level media type is used to declare the general type of data.

If another top-level type is to be used for any reason, it must be given a name starting with "X-" to indicate its non-standard status and to avoid a potential conflict with a future officiel name.

type subty = [
  1. | `Ietf_token of string
  2. | `Iana_token of string
  3. | `X_token of string
]

While the subtype specifies a specific format for that type of data. Thus, a media type of "image/xyz" is enough to tell a user agent that the data is an image, even if the user agent has no knowledge of the specific image format "xyz". Such information be used, for example, to decide whether or not to show a user the raw data from an unrecognized sbtype -- such an action might be reasonable for unrecognized subtype of text, but not for unrecognized subtypes of image or audio.

For this reason, registered subtypes of text, image, audio and video should not contain embedded information tht is really of a different type. Such compound formats should be represented using the "multipart" or "application" types.

TypeBeat recognize 3 subtypes:

  • Subtype from the IANA database: `Iana_token
  • Valid subtype but not recognized by the IANA database: `Ietf_token
  • Like ty, a non-standard subtype starting with "X-": `X_token
type value = [
  1. | `String of string
  2. | `Token of string
]

Parameters are modifiers of the media subtype, and as such do not fundamentally affter the nature of the content. The set of meaningful parameters depends on the media type and subtype, However, a given top-level media type may define parameters which are applicable to any subtype of that type.

Parameters may be required by their defining content type of subtype or they may be optional. TypeBeat does not check any assumption about parameters except for the `Multipart where he expects the "boundary" parameter - but TypeBeat does not processing (not yet!) the "charset" parameter for example.

Note that the value of parameter can be a quoted string (`String). In this case, the value does not include the quotes. That is, the quotation marks in a quoted-string are not a part of the value of the parameter, but are merely used to delimit that parameter value. In other case, the value is `Token.

type content = {
  1. ty : ty;
  2. subty : subty;
  3. parameters : (string * value) list;
}

A convenience record to deal with the "Content-Type" which contains:

  • the media type ty
  • the subtype subty
  • parameters: a associative list of (attribute, value)
val pp_ty : Format.formatter -> ty -> unit

pp_ty ty prints an human readable representation of ty.

val pp_subty : Format.formatter -> subty -> unit

pp_subty subty prints an human readable representation of subty.

val pp_value : Format.formatter -> value -> unit

pp_value value prints an human readable representation of value.

val pp_parameter : Format.formatter -> (string * value) -> unit

pp_value (attribute, value) prints an human readable representation of parameter.

val pp : Format.formatter -> content -> unit

pp content prints an human readable representation of content.

val make : ?parameters:(string * value) list -> ty -> subty -> content
val default : content

Default RFC822 messages without a MIME "Content-Type" header are taken by this protocol to be plain text in the US-ASCII character set, which can be excplicitly specified as:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=use-ascii

This is assumed is no "Content-Type" header field is specified. It is also recommend that this default be assumed when a syntactically invalid "Content-Type" header field is encountered.

val parser : content Angstrom.t

The angstrom parser.

type error = [
  1. | `Invalid of string * string list
  2. | `Incomplete
]
val of_string : string -> (content, error) Pervasives.result

of_string str parses an RFC2045 content starting at 0 in str. We put on the string str the CRLF line break at the end so we ensure than the parsing terminate.

val of_string_with_crlf : string -> (content, error) Pervasives.result

of_string_with_crlf str parses an RFC2045 content starting at 0 in str. We don't put on the string str the CRLF line break but we expect this line break inside str. We need the CRLF line break to terminate the parsing.

val of_string_raw : string -> int -> int -> (content * int, error) Pervasives.result

of_string_raw str off len parses an RFC2045 content starting at off in str to a tuple (content, count) with:

  • content the content
  • count the number of byte read starting at off to parse the content.

We don't put on the string str the CRLF line break at the end but we expect this line break inside str. We the the CRLF line break to terminate the parsing.