MIME Type for Pdf Document

👤 Diwas Poudel 🕒 26 Aug 2022 📁 TECH

PDF is an abbreviation for Portable Document Format, which was introduced by Adobe in 1993 and has since become a reliable way to present and exchange documents. Adobe Systems created it for easy document exchange. It is Commonly used with Adobe and Acrobat Reader.

The International Organization for Standardization now maintains the PDF format as an open standard (ISO standard)(ISO 32000-1:2008). The good thing about PDF Documents is these documents do not rely on any software or hardware. It is used throughout the web, email, and anywhere else where a document exchange mechanism is used.

These documents may include images, text, graphics, video, audio, buttons, form fields, links, and so on.

When a PDF file is not displaying or functioning properly, the easiest solution would be to repair PDF documents with the help of dedicated software. The tool can detect and fix most regular errors and avoid losing any important data from the PDF document.

There are various Internet MIME Types for PDF found like

application/pdf
application/x-pdf
application/x-bzpdf
application/x-gzpdf
applications/vnd.pdf
application/acrobat
application/x-google-chrome-pdf
text/pdf
text/x-pdf

Among them, the standard one is:

application/pdf

The assignment for this mime-type is defined in RFC 8118, The application/pdf Media Type, which can be found in the Media Types registry.

Here,

Type name: application
Subtype name: pdf
Required parameters: none
Optional parameter: none
Encoding considerations: binary

Also, If you have to use content-type for pdf then always use application/pdf as content-type:application/pdf

Also Read: MIME Type for Excel Document

FAQ:

How to convert MIME to PDF?

We can easily convert the file extension .mime to PDF with the help of a PDF printer. This software is free of charge, has no restrictions, works in offline versions, and many more.

How to accept and download pdf files in asp.net?

Small snippets are attached here.

Response.ContentType = "application/pdf";  
Response.AppendHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=my_pdf_file.pdf");  
Response.TransmitFile(Server.MapPath("~/wwwroot/my_pdf_file.pdf"));  
Response.End();

What are PDF/X, PDF/A, and PDF/E?

These are 3 standard PDF files.

PDF/X: Ensures that the file will print properly when sent to professional printing (no RGB colors, all fonts embedded, etc.).
PDF/A: Ensures that the file is suitable for archiving, that is, that it will remain readable for a long time despite technological changes.
PDF/E: This format is especially useful for engineering documents.

What is xpdf ?

Xpdf is a free and open-source PDF viewer that runs on operating systems that support the Qt toolkit. There is no connection between pdf and xpdf.