TSV MIME Type

About TSV files

Like CSV, but with tabs between fields, which avoids most quoting problems because tabs rarely appear in data. This is what you get when you copy cells from a spreadsheet, and what many database and bioinformatics tools export.

File signature

TSV has no fixed signature: it is text without a magic number, so validate uploads by parsing the content rather than by checking bytes.

Serve .tsv with the right Content-Type

Content-Type: text/tab-separated-values; charset=utf-8

text/tab-separated-values tsv tab;

AddType text/tab-separated-values .tsv .tab
AddCharset UTF-8 .tsv .tab

@tsv path *.tsv *.tab
header @tsv Content-Type "text/tab-separated-values; charset=utf-8"

curl -sI https://example.com/file.tsv | grep -i '^content-type'
# Content-Type: text/tab-separated-values; charset=utf-8

Set the type in code

res.set('Content-Type', 'text/tab-separated-values; charset=utf-8');

import mimetypes

mimetypes.add_type('text/tab-separated-values', '.tsv')  # if your system doesn't know it
mimetypes.guess_type('file.tsv')[0]  # 'text/tab-separated-values'

mime.AddExtensionType(".tsv", "text/tab-separated-values; charset=utf-8")
w.Header().Set("Content-Type", "text/tab-separated-values; charset=utf-8")

Accept .tsv uploads

<input type="file" accept=".tsv,.tab,text/tab-separated-values">

The accept attribute only filters the file picker; users can still choose another file. Listing the extension as well as the type matters, because operating systems don’t always report the type you expect.

Related types

• .csv (text/csv): CSV
• .txt (text/plain): Plain text
• .xlsx (application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet): Excel workbook

More data and text

.md , .json , .ndjson , .jsonld , .xml , .yaml , .geojson , .ics , .sql . Look up any extension or type with the MIME type lookup.

Sources

• IANA registration: text/tab-separated-values
• MDN: Common media types

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Frequently asked questions