In the context of email, mime may have two different definitions:
The mime is just the text structure of an email message (known as mime message).
Example:
Delivered-To: [email protected]
Received: by 2002:a05:6504:519b:0:0:0:0 with SMTP id z27csp820130ltq;
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 21:08:18 +0200
To: [email protected]
Subject: Without hosts dkim test !
User-Agent: Heirloom mailx 12.5 7/5/10
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
From: [email protected] (root)
cc: [email protected]
bcc: [email protected]
This is the body of the email
The MIME is specified by the following RFCs if you want to get all details
| Rfc | Description |
|---|---|
| RFC2045 | Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies |
| RFC2046 | Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media Types (See also media type) |
| RFC2047 | MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) Part Three: Message Header Extensions for Non-ASCII Text |
mime is also used widely to refer to the media type (content-type) because this is where it comes from.
An email may be sent with multiformat (with multiple media types)
It's specified in the content-type header and defines the format of the email body
Content-Type: text/html; charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable