A content provider has an added responsibility to return the MIME type for a given URI.
A content provider exposes internal data as a service. Its output is like a result set from a JDBC statement. The caller should know the structure of the rows and columns returned.
A content provider allows you to determine the MIME type of the data represented by the URI.
MIME types work in Android similarly to how they work in HTTP.
You get the MIME type for a given URI from a provider.
The MIME type returned is a two-part string identifying its MIME type according to the standard web MIME conventions.
A MIME type has two parts: a type and a subtype. Here are some examples of well-known MIME-type pairs:
text/html text/css text/xml text/vnd.curl application/pdf application/rtf application/vnd.ms-excel
You can see a complete list of registered types and subtypes at the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) web site:
http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/The primary registered content types are
application audio example image message model multipart text video
Each of these primary types has subtypes.
If a vendor has proprietary data formats, the subtype name begins with vnd.
For example, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets are identified by the subtype vnd.ms-excel.
Some subtypes start with x-; these are nonstandard subtypes that don't have to be registered.
Here are a few examples:
application/x-tar audio/x-aiff video/x-msvideo
Android follows a similar convention to define MIME types.
The vnd in Android MIME types indicates that these types and subtypes are nonstandard, vendor-specific forms.
The Android MIME type for each content type has two forms: one for a specific record and one for multiple records.
For a single record, the MIME type looks like this:
vnd.android.cursor.item/vnd.yourcompanyname.contenttype
For a collection of records or rows, the MIME type looks like this:
vnd.android.cursor.dir/vnd.yourcompanyname.contenttype
Here are a couple of examples:
//One single note
vnd.android.cursor.item/vnd.google.note
//A collection or a directory of notes
vnd.android.cursor.dir/vnd.google.note