Re: http 1.1 RFC

Koen Holtman (koen@win.tue.nl)
Tue, 23 Jun 1998 13:22:42 +0200 (MET DST) 

peter_lenahan@ibi.com:
>
>
>     To: Tim Berners-Lee (http-wg@cuckoo.hpl.hp.com)
>     From: Peter Lenahan (pjl@ibi.com)
>     
>     May I ask for a feature in the next version HTTP 1.1
>     
>     I have read the HTTP 1.1 spec and searched for this and couldn't find 
>     a solution.
[...]     
>     The Content-Name would formally name the data, this would give the 
>     browser a name to save a file under when the user is prompted in the 
>     browser's save dialog box.

Hi Peter,

The upcoming update of the HTTP 1.1 specification RFC includes a
description of the feature you want.  This is not officially part of
the standard but it is widely adopted in current browsers.

I have included the draft text (from
draft-ietf-http-v11-spec-rev-03.txt) below.

Koen.


--snip--

  19.5.1 Content-Disposition

  The Content-Disposition response-header field has been proposed as a
  means for the origin server to suggest a default filename if the user
  requests that the content is saved to a file. This usage is derived
  from the definition of Content-Disposition in RFC 1806 [35].

          content-disposition = "Content-Disposition" ":"
                                disposition-type *( ";"
                                    disposition-parm )
          disposition-type = "attachment" | disp-extension-token
          disposition-parm = filename-parm | disp-extension-parm
          filename-parm = "filename" "=" quoted-string
          disp-extension-token = token
          disp-extension-parm = token "=" ( token | quoted-string )

  An example is

          Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="fname.ext"
  
  The receiving user agent should not respect any directory path
  information that may seem to be present in the filename-parm
  parameter, which is the only parameter believed to apply to HTTP
  implementations at this time. The filename should be treated as a
  terminal component only.
       
  [If this header is used in a response with the
  application/octet-stream content-type,(*)] the implied suggestion is
  that the user agent should not display the response, but directly
  enter a `save response as...' dialog.

  See section 15.5 for Content-Disposition security issues.

 (*) This half-sentence seems to have been dropped from the 03
 revision, it was still in the 01 revision.  Editing error?  I'll raise
 this as an issue.