How to detect that mime type is for executable file?

Question

I am using Apache Tika to detect the mime type of an input stream and I was wondering if there's a ready method to detect that this file is an executable file, there's a big list of executable files mime types here:

http://www.file-extensions.org/filetype/extension/name/program-executable-files

and I was wondering about the best way to cover them all.

Answer 1

Apache Tika's mime-types have a hierarchy. So, you don't need to check for all possible executable types, all you need to do is check if the detected type has a parent that's one of the handful of executable umbrella types

For Windows, the main one is application/x-msdownload. You might also want to check for application/x-ms-installer too

For Unix, the main one is application/x-elf, but you potentially also want to check for the scripting formats such as application/x-sh, text/x-perl, text/x-python etc.

As for how to go from a Mimetype in Tika to its parent, you'll want this existing answer here - "Correct use of Apache Tika MediaType". (Note that you need to recurse, in case there are multiple levels between the detected mime type and the base executable parent type)