# File Sniffer Welcome to File Sniffer on Exercism's Elixir Track. If you need help running the tests or submitting your code, check out `HELP.md`. If you get stuck on the exercise, check out `HINTS.md`, but try and solve it without using those first :) ## Introduction ## Binaries Elixir provides an elegant syntax for working with binary data as we have seen with the `<<>>` special form provided for working with [bitstrings][exercism-bitstrings]. The binary type is a specialization on the bitstring type. Where bitstrings could be of any length (any number of [bits][wiki-bit]), binaries are where the number of bits can be evenly divided by 8. That is, when working with binaries, we often think of things in terms of [bytes][wiki-byte] (8 bits). A byte can represent integer numbers from `0` to `255`. It is common to work with byte values in [hexadecimal][wiki-hexadecimal], `0x00 - 0xFF`. Binary literals are defined using the bitstring special form `<<>>`. When defining a binary literal, we can use integer and string literals. Integer values greater than 255 will overflow and only the last 8 bits of the integer will be used. By default, the `::binary` modifier is applied to the value. We can concatenate binaries with the `<>/2` operator. ```elixir <<255>> == <<0xFF>> <<256>> == <<0>> # Overflowing bits are truncated <<2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16>> == <<0x02, 0x04, 0x06, 0x08, 0x0A, 0x0C, 0x0E, 0x10>> ``` A _null-byte_ is another name for `<<0>>`. ### Pattern matching on binary data [Pattern matching][exercism-pattern-matching] is even extended to binaries, and we can pattern match on a portion of binary data much like we could for a list. ```elixir # Ignore the first 8 bytes, match and bind the remaining to `body` <<_::binary-size(8), body::binary>> ``` Like with other types of pattern matching, we can use this in function signatures to match when selecting from multiple function clauses. [wiki-bit]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit [wiki-byte]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte [wiki-hexadecimal]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexadecimal [exercism-bitstrings]: https://exercism.org/tracks/elixir/concepts/bitstrings [exercism-pattern-matching]: https://exercism.org/tracks/elixir/concepts/pattern-matching ## Instructions You have been working on a project which allows users to upload files to the server to be shared with other users. You have been tasked with writing a function to verify that an upload matches its [media type][mimetype]. You do some research and discover that the first few bytes of a file are generally unique to that file type, giving it a sort of signature. Use the following table for reference: | File type | Common extension | Media type | binary 'signature' | | --------- | ---------------- | ---------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------ | | ELF | `"exe"` | `"application/octet-stream"` | `0x7F, 0x45, 0x4C, 0x46` | | BMP | `"bmp"` | `"image/bmp"` | `0x42, 0x4D` | | PNG | `"png"` | `"image/png"` | `0x89, 0x50, 0x4E, 0x47, 0x0D, 0x0A, 0x1A, 0x0A` | | JPG | `"jpg"` | `"image/jpg"` | `0xFF, 0xD8, 0xFF` | | GIF | `"gif"` | `"image/gif"` | `0x47, 0x49, 0x46` | ## 1. Given an extension, return the expected media type Implement the `type_from_extension/1` function. It should take a file extension (string) and return the media type (string) or nil if the extension does not match with the expected ones. ```elixir FileSniffer.type_from_extension("exe") # => "application/octet-stream" FileSniffer.type_from_extension("txt") # => nil ``` ## 2. Given a binary file, return the expected media type Implement the `type_from_binary/1` function. It should take a file (binary) and return the media type (string) or nil if the extension does not match with the expected ones. ```elixir file = File.read!("application.exe") FileSniffer.type_from_binary(file) # => "application/octet-stream" file = File.read!("example.txt") FileSniffer.type_from_binary(file) # => nil ``` Don't worry about reading the file as a binary. Assume that has been done for you and is provided by the tests as an argument. ## 3. Given an extension and a binary file, verify that the file matches the expected type Implement the `verify/2` function. It should take a file (binary) and extension (string) and return an `:ok` or `:error` tuple. ```elixir file = File.read!("application.exe") FileSniffer.verify(file, "exe") # => {:ok, "application/octet-stream"} FileSniffer.verify(file, "png") # => {:error, "Warning, file format and file extension do not match."} ``` [mimetype]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_type ## Source ### Created by - @neenjaw ### Contributed to by - @angelikatyborska - @cr0t