RFC 6838: Media Type Specifications and Registration Procedures | RFC Editor

Skip to content Primary navigationThe RFC SeriesFor AuthorsAbout UsHomeRFC 6838 View as: Plain Text, Compact HTML Info RFC 6838: BCP 13: Media Type Specifications and Registration Proceduresmedia typesJanuary 2013. N. Freed, J. Klensin, T. HansenBest Current PracticeSubscribe5 subscribed Add to Set Added to 2 Sets Read aloud This RFC was updated, see RFC 9694.Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) N. Freed Request for Comments: 6838 Oracle BCP: 13 J. Klensin Obsoletes: 4288 Category: Best Current Practice T. Hansen ISSN: 2070-1721 AT&T Laboratories January 2013 Media Type Specifications and Registration Procedures Abstract This document defines procedures for the specification and registration of media types for use in HTTP, MIME, and other Internet protocols. Status of This Memo This memo documents an Internet Best Current Practice. This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on BCPs is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741. Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6838. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. Freed, et al. Best Current Practice [Page 1] RFC 6838 Media Type Registration January 2013 Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.1. Historical Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.2. Conventions Used in This Document . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2. Media Type Registration Preliminaries . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3. Registration Trees and Subtype Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3.1. Standards Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3.2. Vendor Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 3.3. Personal or Vanity Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 3.4. Unregistered x. Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 3.5. Additional Registration Trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 4. Registration Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 4.1. Functionality Requirement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 4.2. Naming Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 4.2.1. Text Media Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 4.2.2. Image Media Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 4.2.3. Audio Media Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 4.2.4. Video Media Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 4.2.5. Application Media Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 4.2.6. Multipart and Message Media Types . . . . . . . . . . 11 4.2.7. Additional Top-Level Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 4.2.8. Structured Syntax Name Suffixes . . . . . . . . . . . 12 4.2.9. Deprecated Aliases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 4.3. Parameter Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 4.4. Canonicalization and Format Requirements . . . . . . . . . 14 4.5. Interchange Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 4.6. Security Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 4.7. Requirements Specific to XML Media Types . . . . . . . . . 16 4.8. Encoding Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 4.9. Usage and Implementation Non-Requirements . . . . . . . . 17 4.10. Publication Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 4.11. Fragment Identifier Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 4.12. Additional Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 5. Media Type Registration Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 5.1. Preliminary Community Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 5.2. Submit Request to IANA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 5.2.1. Provisional Registrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 5.3. Review and Approval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 5.4. Comments on Media Type Registrations . . . . . . . . . . . 21 5.5. Change Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 5.6. Registration Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 6. Structured Syntax Suffix Registration Procedures . . . . . . . 23 6.1. Change Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 6.2. Structured Syntax Suffix Registration Template . . . . . . 24 7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 8. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 9. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Freed, et al. Best Current Practice [Page 2] RFC 6838 Media Type Registration January 2013 10. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 10.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 10.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Appendix A. Grandfathered Media Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Appendix B. Changes since RFC 4288 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 1. Introduction Recent Internet protocols have been carefully designed to be easily extensible in certain areas. In particular, many protocols, including but not limited to HTTP [RFC2616] and MIME [RFC2045], are capable of carrying arbitrary labeled content. The mechanism used to label such content is a media type, consisting of a top-level type and a subtype, which is further structured into trees. Optionally, media types can define compan