Validate MIME types with PHP Fileinfo

How to check the file type in PHP and secure file uploads: it is important to validate MIME types in PHP. Especially of files uploaded through an upload form to your website. Using PHP, the best way to validate MIME types is with the PHP extension Fileinfo. Any other method might not be as good or secure as you might think...

PHP file input validation, The old^Wwrong way

It is quite common to only look at the file extension to determine what type of file it is (I was hoping to say "years and years ago", but unfortunately I still see this on a regular basis...).

An image always has an extension like .jpg, .jpeg, .png or .gif, right? And a Portable Document Format is the only file type to use .pdf as extension. Oh we were wrong!

To validate a file's extension, we used to use something in the line of:

if(eregi("\.jpg|\.jpeg|\.gif|\.png|\.bmp", $_FILES['userfile']['name']) != FALSE) {
  // do stuff
  // some more ...
}

and whether this example uses ereg, eregi or preg_match doesn't matter. Seeing an extension like jpg, jpeg, gif, png or bmp made sure these are only images, right? Not!

Some of us might expanded the validation of PHP uploaded files with an extra check:

PHP File Validation, A Better Way To Validate MIME Types , but only for images

A better way to validate MIME types in PHP is:

$imageInfo = getimagesize( $_FILES['userfile']['tmp_name'] );
if ($imageInfo['mime'] == ("image/png") ||
  $imageInfo['mime'] == ("image/jpeg") || 
  $imageInfo['mime'] == ("image/gif") || 
  $imageInfo['mime'] == ("image/psd") || 
  $imageInfo['mime'] == ("image/bmp")) {

This last check uses a PHP image function called getimagesize(). So this only works on images.

The getimagesize() function will determine the size of any given image file and return the dimensions along with the file type and a height/width text string to be used inside a normal HTML IMG tag and the correspondent HTTP content type.

But getimagesize() only works for images and fails on other file types. Therefore a lot of developers use (hopefully used to use?) mime_content_type().

Well, let that function be deprecated in favor of the PECL extension Fileinfo. And on its turn, the PECL extension Fileinfo now is deprecated in favor of the PHP extension Fileinfo. Can you still follow?

So it is best to use the PHP extension Fileinfo, because it works for other file types than images too.

PHP Fileinfo extension: validate MIME types and secure file uploads in PHP

To properly validate MIME-types in PHP, in order to provide some sort of file upload security, you need to use PHP Fileinfo functions. This can validate Office MIME types and others.

An example PHP function to validate Office and PDF MIME types is:

<?php
/*
 * Follow me on Twitter: @Jan_Reilink, https://twitter.com/Jan_Reilink
 *
 * Support: https://www.paypal.me/jreilink
 */
function check_doc_mime( $tmpname ) {
	// MIME types: http://filext.com/faq/office_mime_types.php
	$finfo = finfo_open( FILEINFO_MIME_TYPE );
	$mtype = finfo_file( $finfo, $tmpname );
	finfo_close( $finfo );
	if( $mtype == ( "application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document" ) || 
		$mtype == ( "application/vnd.ms-excel" ) ||
		$mtype == ( "application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet" ) || 
		$mtype == ( "application/vnd.ms-powerpoint" ) ||
		$mtype == ( "application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation" ) || 
		$mtype == ( "application/pdf" ) ) {
        return TRUE;
    }
    else {
        return FALSE;
    }
}

if( function_exists( "check_doc_mime" ) ) {
	if ( !check_doc_mime( $_FILES['userfile']['tmp_name'] ) ) {
		/*
		 * Not a MIME type we want uploaded to our site, stop here
		 * and return an error message, or just die();
		 */
	} else {
		/*
		 * a MIME type we support is uploaded. Continue with our
		 * upload script
		 */
	}
}

/* Support https://www.paypal.me/jreilink , thank you! */
?>

This function can be used to verify the MIME type of files uploaded through HTTP $_POST. Proper user input validation is important for your website security!

Thank you very much! <3 ❤️