Nginx HTTP Server - Fourth Edition

types

Context: http, server, and location

This directive allows you to establish correlations between MIME types and file extensions. It's actually a block accepting a particular syntax:

types { 
  mimetype1  extension1; 
  mimetype2  extension2 [extension3...]; 
  [...] 
}

When Nginx serves a file, it checks the file extension in order to determine the MIME type. The MIME type is then sent as the value of the Content-Type HTTP header in the response. This header may affect the way browsers handle files. For example, if the MIME type of the file you are requesting is application/pdf, your browser may, for instance, attempt to render the file using a plugin associated with that MIME type instead of merely downloading it.

Nginx includes a basic set of ...