aid: file-format
name: File Format
description: >-
  File formats define how information is encoded for storage in a computer
  file, spanning images (PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP, AVIF), audio (WAV, MP3, OGG,
  FLAC), video (MP4, MOV, MKV), documents (PDF, HTML, DOCX, ODT), data
  serialization (JSON, XML, YAML, CSV, Parquet, Avro), archives (ZIP, TAR,
  GZIP), and executables. File formats are central to API and data
  interoperability, identified via filename extensions, magic numbers, MIME
  types, and IANA media-type registrations.
type: Index
image: https://kinlane-productions.s3.amazonaws.com/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
url: >-
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/file-format/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2025-01-01'
modified: '2026-04-28'
specificationVersion: '0.19'
tags:
  - File Format
  - File Formats
  - Media Types
  - MIME Types
  - Encoding
  - Serialization
  - Interoperability
apis: []
common:
  - type: GitHubOrganization
    url: https://github.com/FileFormatInfo
  - type: Reference
    name: Wikipedia - File Format
    url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_format
  - type: Reference
    name: IANA Media Types
    url: https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml
  - type: Reference
    name: List of File Formats (Wikipedia)
    url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_file_formats
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com