human-filetypes

Human-friendly taxonomy for file types. Zero dependencies.

List of mime types sourced from MDN.

Usage

npm i human-filetypes

The module exports two main operations fromMime() and fromExtension()

import { fromMime, fromExtension  } from 'human-filetypes'

fromMime

fromMime() converts a MIME type identifier to a human-redable file kind.

const assert = require('assert')

assert.equal(fromMime('image/png'), 'image')
assert.equal(fromMime('image/webp'), 'image')
assert.equal(fromMime('application/pdf'), 'document')
assert.equal(fromMime('application/msword'), 'document')
assert.equal(fromMime('image/jpeg'), 'image')
assert.equal(fromMime('video/mpeg'), 'video')
assert.equal(fromMime('video/webm'), 'video')
assert.equal(fromMime('text/javascript'), 'text')
assert.equal(fromMime('application/json'), 'text')
assert.equal(fromMime('text/csv'), 'spreadsheet')
assert.equal(fromMime('application/zip'), 'archive')

fromExtension

fromExtension() converts a file extension or a filename to a human-redable file kind.

assert.equal(fromExtension('.png'), 'image')
assert.equal(fromExtension('.webp'), 'image')
assert.equal(fromExtension('.gif'), 'image')
assert.equal(fromExtension('.pdf'), 'document')
assert.equal(fromExtension('.docx'), 'document')
assert.equal(fromExtension('.mp4'), 'video')
assert.equal(fromExtension('.webm'), 'video')
assert.equal(fromExtension('.json'), 'text')
assert.equal(fromExtension('.exe'), 'application')
assert.equal(fromExtension('.zip'), 'archive')

Human-readable file kinds

The following taxonomy is used:

File Kind	Description	Examples
image	Image file	.png, .gif, .webp
video	Video file	.mp4, .webm
audio	Audio file	.mp3, .wav
archive	Archive file	.zip, .tar, .tar.gz
document	Text Document	.pdf, .docx, .odt
spreadsheet	Spreadsheet	.xlsx, .csv, .tsv
presentation	Presentation	.ppt, .pptx, .odp
font	Font package	.ttf, .otf, .woff2
text	Plain text file	.txt, .html, .json
application	Executable/application package	.exe, .jar, .swf
unknown	Unknown	-

File kinds are also available to import as an enum:

import { FileKind } from 'human-filetypes'

assert.equal(fromExtension('.zip'), FileKind.Archive)

Reverse operations

In addition, we provide reverse operations getMimeTypes() and getExtensions().

getMimeTypes() returns the list of known mime types for a given file kind.

getMimeTypes('image') // ['image/gif', 'image/jpeg', 'image/png', ...]
getMimeTypes('audio') // ['audio/midi', 'audio/x-midi', 'audio/mpeg', ...]
getMimeTypes('video') // ['video/mp4', 'video/mpeg', 'video/ogg', ...]
getMimeTypes('document') // ['application/pdf', 'application/rtf', ...]
getMimeTypes('font') // ['font/ttf', 'font/woff', ...]
getMimeTypes('text') // ['text/css', 'application/html', ...]
getMimeTypes('application') // ['application/octet-stream', 'application/java-archive', ...]
getMimeTypes('archive') // ['application/gzip', 'application/x-tar', ...]

getExtensions() returns the list of known extensions for a given file kind.

getExtensions('image') // ['png', 'jpeg', ...]
getExtensions('audio') // ['mp3', 'ogg', 'wav', ...]
getExtensions('video') // ['mp4', 'mpeg', 'ogv', ...]
getExtensions('document') // ['docx', 'pdf', ...]
getExtensions('font') // ['ttf', 'woff', ...])
getExtensions('text') // ['css', 'txt', 'csh', ...]
getExtensions('application') // ['bin', 'exe', 'dll', ...]
getExtensions('archive') // ['zip', 'rar', ...]

Contributing

human-filetypes is Free and Open Source Software. Issues and pull requests are more than welcome!