MIME is the acronym for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, which refers to an internet standard for the format of e-mail messages. It can be used to include multiple types of content within a single message, based on explanation by ABBREVIATIONFINDER.
MIME extends the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) format of emails to insert different types of content, whether they are in text or not. Some parts of these messages may involve images, audios and texts in different characters. Since many of the messages on the internet have a very close association between the SMTP and MIME standards, they are sometimes referred to as SMTP / MIME messages.
MIME also allows that data from different contents can be transmitted by Internet electronic mail without the need for prior conversion to ASCII format. This is accomplished through the MIME types used to describe the content of a document. After that, an application compatible with the standard sends the file and the receiving application performs a query on a standardized list of documents that are organized in MIME types and subtypes, with the purpose of debugging the contents of the transmitted file.
The basic SMTP protocol supports only 7-bit ASCII characters limiting email messages, since it also includes only characters used in the English language. For this reason, MIME provides mechanisms so that information with different content can be sent over the internet through electronic mail. For this, it uses encodings that do not exist in ASCII. The basic email format is defined by RFC 2822, which updates the RFC 822 version. These standards are part of specifications that appear in the email headers, such as “To:”, “Subject:” and “From:” .
MIME is also a primary component of communication for other important Internet protocols, such as HTTP. This protocol requires data to be sent in contexts similar to those sent in e-mail messages. Therefore, the content-type header and record MIME type are reused.
The well-known MIME type is the combination of type and subtype, although in most modern applications the Internet Media Type is the most used term. This shows that it can be used outside messages in MIME format.
Using the multipart type, MIME allows messages with various types of tree constructions. Some supported mechanisms are simple texts using text / plain, texts with attached files, replies with original attachments, alternative content used when a message is sent in plain text and an email client turns it into HTML for the recipient, in addition to other message templates.
