RFC 2045: Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies | RFC Editor

Skip to content Primary navigationThe RFC SeriesFor AuthorsAbout UsHomeRFC 2045 View as: Plain Text, Compact HTML Info RFC 2045: Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message BodiesMIMENovember 1996. N. Freed, N. BorensteinDraft StandardSubscribe6 subscribed Add to Set Added to 2 Sets Read aloud This RFC was updated, see RFC 2184, RFC 2231, RFC 5335, RFC 6532.Network Working Group N. Freed Request for Comments: 2045 Innosoft Obsoletes: 1521, 1522, 1590 N. Borenstein Category: Standards Track First Virtual November 1996 Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies Status of this Memo This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Abstract STD 11, RFC 822, defines a message representation protocol specifying considerable detail about US-ASCII message headers, and leaves the message content, or message body, as flat US-ASCII text. This set of documents, collectively called the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, or MIME, redefines the format of messages to allow for (1) textual message bodies in character sets other than US-ASCII, (2) an extensible set of different formats for non-textual message bodies, (3) multi-part message bodies, and (4) textual header information in character sets other than US-ASCII. These documents are based on earlier work documented in RFC 934, STD 11, and RFC 1049, but extends and revises them. Because RFC 822 said so little about message bodies, these documents are largely orthogonal to (rather than a revision of) RFC 822. This initial document specifies the various headers used to describe the structure of MIME messages. The second document, RFC 2046, defines the general structure of the MIME media typing system and defines an initial set of media types. The third document, RFC 2047, describes extensions to RFC 822 to allow non-US-ASCII text data in Freed & Borenstein Standards Track [Page 1] RFC 2045 Internet Message Bodies November 1996 Internet mail header fields. The fourth document, RFC 2048, specifies various IANA registration procedures for MIME-related facilities. The fifth and final document, RFC 2049, describes MIME conformance criteria as well as providing some illustrative examples of MIME message formats, acknowledgements, and the bibliography. These documents are revisions of RFCs 1521, 1522, and 1590, which themselves were revisions of RFCs 1341 and 1342. An appendix in RFC 2049 describes differences and changes from previous versions. Table of Contents 1. Introduction ......................................... 3 2. Definitions, Conventions, and Generic BNF Grammar .... 5 2.1 CRLF ................................................ 5 2.2 Character Set ....................................... 6 2.3 Message ............................................. 6 2.4 Entity .............................................. 6 2.5 Body Part ........................................... 7 2.6 Body ................................................ 7 2.7 7bit Data ........................................... 7 2.8 8bit Data ........................................... 7 2.9 Binary Data ......................................... 7 2.10 Lines .............................................. 7 3. MIME Header Fields ................................... 8 4. MIME-Version Header Field ............................ 8 5. Content-Type Header Field ............................ 10 5.1 Syntax of the Content-Type Header Field ............. 12 5.2 Content-Type Defaults ............................... 14 6. Content-Transfer-Encoding Header Field ............... 14 6.1 Content-Transfer-Encoding Syntax .................... 14 6.2 Content-Transfer-Encodings Semantics ................ 15 6.3 New Content-Transfer-Encodings ...................... 16 6.4 Interpretation and Use .............................. 16 6.5 Translating Encodings ............................... 18 6.6 Canonical Encoding Model ............................ 19 6.7 Quoted-Printable Content-Transfer-Encoding .......... 19 6.8 Base64 Content-Transfer-Encoding .................... 24 7. Content-ID Header Field .............................. 26 8. Content-Description Header Field ..................... 27 9. Additional MIME Header Fields ........................ 27 10. Summary ............................................. 27 11. Security Considerations ............................. 27 12. Authors' Addresses .................................. 28 A. Collected Grammar .................................... 29 Freed & Borenstein Standards Track [Page 2] RFC 2045 Internet Message Bodies November 1996 1. Introduction Since its publication in 1982, RFC 822 has defined the standard format of textual mail messages on the Internet. Its success has been such that the RFC 822 format has been adopted, wholly or partially, well beyond the confines of the Internet and the Internet SMTP transport defined by RFC 821. As the format has seen wider use, a number of limitations have proven increasingly restrictive for the user community. RFC 822 was intended to specify a format for text messages. As such, non-text messages, such as multimedia messages that might include audio or images, are simply not mentioned. Even in the case of text, however, RFC 822 is inadequate for the needs of mail users whose languages require the use of character sets richer than US-ASCII. Since RFC 822 does not specify mechanisms for mail containing audio, video, Asian language text, or even text in most European languages, additional specifications are needed. One of the notable limitations of RFC 821/822 based mail systems is the fact that they limit the contents of electronic mail messages to relatively short lines