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Fixing OpenDocument MIME magic on Linux

Posted by Sander_Marechal on · 8 comments
Lone Wolves; By Sander Marechal, The Netherlands 		Mail this story
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When working on the beta of Officeshots.org I ran into an interesting problem with file type and MIME type detection of OpenDocument files. When a user uploads an ODF file to Officeshots I want to determine the MIME type myself using the PHP Fileinfo extension. On Linux, the PHP Fileinfo extension relies on the magic file that is provided by the file package. The magic file contains a series of tests that can determine the file type and MIME type of a file by its contents. I found out that the magic file is incomplete for OpenDocument files. In this article I will show you what is wrong with the magic file and how you can fix it.

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Comments (8)

tuxchick ·
Nice bit of debugging, Sander, and a fix! Well done.
Sander_Marechal Story submitter ·
Thanks. It has been reported to Debian as well of course: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=525979

Bob_Robertson ·
As a Debian user, Thank You.
Sander_Marechal Story submitter ·
I have updated the article with a patch against the original, upstream file-5.0.3 which had the same problem. That should be useful for those of you who don't use Debian.

Patch here: http://www.jejik.com/files/examples/file-5.0.3-opendocument....
Sander_Marechal Story submitter ·
I just got mail that the patch has been committed to the upstream file package. So, it should appear in a new distro near you soon :-)

http://mx.gw.com/pipermail/file/2009/000399.html
tuxchick ·
Wow, that was fast. I make myself a root beer float in your honor :)
gus3 ·
*POOF* you're a root beer? How did you do that?

And can you still type?
tuxchick ·
Duh. Multi-talented Renaissance root beer.

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