PHP, display image with Header()

Question

I'm displaying images from outside my web root, like this:

header('Content-type:image/png');
readfile($fullpath);

The content-type: image/png is what confuses me.

Someone else helped me out with this code, but I noticed that not all images are PNG. Many are jpg or gif.
And still they are displayed successfully.

does anyone know why?

Answer 1

Browsers can often tell the image type by sniffing out the meta information of the image. Also, there should be a space in that header:

header('Content-type: image/png');

Answer 2

Browsers make their best guess with the data they receive. This works for markup (which Websites often get wrong) and other media content. A program that receives a file can often figure out what its received regardless of the MIME content type it's been told.

This isn't something you should rely on however. It's recommended you always use the correct MIME content.

Answer 3

The best solution would be to read in the file, then decide which kind of image it is and send out the appropriate header

$filename = basename($file);
$file_extension = strtolower(substr(strrchr($filename,"."),1));

switch( $file_extension ) {
    case "gif": $ctype="image/gif"; break;
    case "png": $ctype="image/png"; break;
    case "jpeg":
    case "jpg": $ctype="image/jpg"; break;
    default:
}