One document matched: draft-ietf-httpbis-content-disp-03.txt
Differences from draft-ietf-httpbis-content-disp-02.txt
HTTPbis Working Group J. Reschke
Internet-Draft greenbytes
Updates: 2616 (if approved) October 25, 2010
Intended status: Standards Track
Expires: April 28, 2011
Use of the Content-Disposition Header Field in the
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
draft-ietf-httpbis-content-disp-03
Abstract
HTTP/1.1 defines the Content-Disposition response header field, but
points out that it is not part of the HTTP/1.1 Standard. This
specification takes over the definition and registration of Content-
Disposition, as used in HTTP, and clarifies internationalization
aspects.
Editorial Note (To be removed by RFC Editor before publication)
This specification is expected to replace the definition of Content-
Disposition in the HTTP/1.1 specification, as currently revised by
the IETF HTTPbis working group. See also
<http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/123>.
Discussion of this draft should take place on the HTTPBIS working
group mailing list (ietf-http-wg@w3.org). The current issues list is
at <http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/
query?component=content-disp> and related documents (including fancy
diffs) can be found at <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/>.
The changes in this draft are summarized in Appendix D.7.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
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This Internet-Draft will expire on April 28, 2011.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2010 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Notational Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Header Field Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.1. Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.2. Disposition Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.3. Disposition Parameter: 'Filename' . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.4. Disposition Parameter: Extensions . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.5. Extensibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5. Internationalization Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
7.1. Registry for Disposition Values and Parameter . . . . . . 8
7.2. Header Field Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
8. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Appendix A. Changes from the RFC 2616 Definition . . . . . . . . 10
Appendix B. Differences compared to RFC 2183 . . . . . . . . . . 10
Appendix C. Alternative Approaches to Internationalization . . . 11
C.1. RFC 2047 Encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
C.2. Percent Encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
C.3. Encoding Sniffing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
C.4. Implementations (to be removed by RFC Editor before
publication) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Appendix D. Change Log (to be removed by RFC Editor before
publication) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
D.1. Since draft-reschke-rfc2183-in-http-00 . . . . . . . . . . 12
D.2. Since draft-reschke-rfc2183-in-http-01 . . . . . . . . . . 13
D.3. Since draft-reschke-rfc2183-in-http-02 . . . . . . . . . . 13
D.4. Since draft-reschke-rfc2183-in-http-03 . . . . . . . . . . 13
D.5. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-content-disp-00 . . . . . . . . . 13
D.6. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-content-disp-01 . . . . . . . . . 13
D.7. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-content-disp-02 . . . . . . . . . 13
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
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1. Introduction
HTTP/1.1 defines the Content-Disposition response header field in
Section 19.5.1 of [RFC2616], but points out that it is not part of
the HTTP/1.1 Standard (Section 15.5):
Content-Disposition is not part of the HTTP standard, but since it
is widely implemented, we are documenting its use and risks for
implementers.
This specification takes over the definition and registration of
Content-Disposition, as used in HTTP. Based on interoperability
testing with existing User Agents, it fully defines a profile of the
features defined in the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME)
variant ([RFC2183]) of the header field, and also clarifies
internationalization aspects.
2. Notational Conventions
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
This specification uses the augmented BNF notation defined in Section
2.1 of [RFC2616], including its rules for linear whitespace (LWS).
3. Header Field Definition
The Content-Disposition response header field is used to convey
additional information about how to process the response payload, and
also can be used to attach additional metadata, such as the filename
to use when saving the response payload locally.
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3.1. Grammar
content-disposition = "Content-Disposition" ":"
disposition-type *( ";" disposition-parm )
disposition-type = "inline" | "attachment" | disp-ext-type
; case-insensitive
disp-ext-type = token
disposition-parm = filename-parm | disp-ext-parm
filename-parm = "filename" "=" value
| "filename*" "=" ext-value
disp-ext-parm = token "=" value
| ext-token "=" ext-value
ext-token = <the characters in token, followed by "*">
Defined in [RFC2616]:
token = <token, defined in [RFC2616], Section 2.2>
value = <value, defined in [RFC2616], Section 3.6>
Defined in [RFC5987]:
ext-value = <ext-value, defined in [RFC5987], Section 3.2>
Parameter names MUST NOT be repeated; a header field value with
multiple instances of the same parameter SHOULD be treated as
invalid.
3.2. Disposition Type
If the disposition type matches "attachment" (case-insensitively),
this indicates that the user agent should prompt the user to save the
response locally, rather than process it normally (as per its media
type).
On the other hand, if it matches "inline" (case-insensitively), this
implies default processing.
Unknown or unhandled disposition types SHOULD be handled the same way
as "attachment" (see also [RFC2183], Section 2.8).
3.3. Disposition Parameter: 'Filename'
The parameters "filename" and "filename*", to be matched case-
insensitively, provide information on how to construct a filename for
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storing the message payload.
Depending on the disposition type, this information might be used
right away (in the "save as..." interaction caused for the
"attachment" disposition type), or later on (for instance, when the
user decides to save the contents of the current page being
displayed).
The parameters "filename" and "filename*" differ only in that
"filename*" uses the encoding defined in [RFC5987], allowing the use
of characters not present in the ISO-8859-1 character set
([ISO-8859-1]).
Many user agent implementations predating this specification do not
understand the "filename*" parameter. Therefore, when both
"filename" and "filename*" are present in a single header field
value, recipients SHOULD pick "filename*" and ignore "filename".
This way, senders can avoid special-casing specific user agents by
sending both the more expressive "filename*" parameter, and the
"filename" parameter as fallback for legacy recipients (see Section 4
for an example).
It is essential that user agents treat the specified filename as
advisory only, thus be very careful in extracting the desired
information. In particular:
o When the value contains path separator characters, all but the
last segment SHOULD be ignored. This prevents unintentional
overwriting of well-known file system location (such as "/etc/
passwd").
o Many platforms do not use Internet Media Types ([RFC2046]) to hold
type information in the file system, but rely on filename
extensions instead. Trusting the server-provided file extension
could introduce a privilege escalation when the saved file is
later opened (consider ".exe"). Thus, recipients need to ensure
that a file extension is used that is safe, optimally matching the
media type of the received payload.
o Recipients are advised to strip or replace character sequences
that are known to cause confusion both in user interfaces and in
filenames, such as control characters and leading and trailing
whitespace.
o Other aspects recipients need to be aware of are names that have a
special meaning in the file system or in shell commands, such as
"." and "..", "~", "|", and also device names.
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Note: Many user agents do not properly handle escape characters
when using the quoted-string form. Furthermore, some user agents
erroneously try to perform unescaping of "percent" escapes (see
Appendix C.2), and thus might misinterpret filenames containing
the percent character followed by two hex digits.
3.4. Disposition Parameter: Extensions
To enable future extensions, unknown parameters SHOULD be ignored
(see also [RFC2183], Section 2.8).
3.5. Extensibility
Note that Section 9 of [RFC2183] defines IANA registries both for
disposition types and disposition parameters. This registry is
shared by different protocols using Content-Disposition, such as MIME
and HTTP. Therefore, not all registered values may make sense in the
context of HTTP.
4. Examples
Direct UA to show "save as" dialog, with a filename of
"example.html":
Content-Disposition: Attachment; filename=example.html
Direct UA to behave as if the Content-Disposition header field wasn't
present, but to remember the filename "example.html" for a subsequent
save operation:
Content-Disposition: INLINE; FILENAME= "example.html"
Direct UA to show "save as" dialog, with a filename of "an example":
Content-Disposition: Attachment; Filename*=UTF-8'en'an%20example
Note that this example uses the extended encoding defined in
[RFC5987] to specify that the natural language of the filename is
English, and also to encode the space character which is not allowed
in the token production.
Direct UA to show "save as" dialog, with a filename containing the
Unicode character U+20AC (EURO SIGN):
Content-Disposition: attachment;
filename*= UTF-8''%e2%82%ac%20rates
Here, the encoding defined in [RFC5987] is also used to encode the
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non-ISO-8859-1 character.
Same as above, but adding the "filename" parameter for compatibility
with user agents not implementing RFC 5987:
Content-Disposition: attachment;
filename="EURO rates";
filename*=utf-8''%e2%82%ac%20rates
Note: as of October 2010, those user agents that do not support the
RFC 5987 encoding ignore "filename*" when it occurs after "filename".
Unfortunately, some user agents that do support RFC 5987 do pick the
"filename" rather than the "filename*" parameter when it occurs
first; it is expected that this situation is going to improve soon.
5. Internationalization Considerations
The "filename*" parameter (Section 3.3), using the encoding defined
in [RFC5987], allows the server to transmit characters outside the
ISO-8859-1 character set, and also to optionally specify the language
in use.
Future parameters might also require internationalization, in which
case the same encoding can be used.
6. Security Considerations
Using server-supplied information for constructing local filenames
introduces many risks. These are summarized in Section 3.3.
Furthermore, implementers also ought to be aware of the Security
Considerations applying to HTTP (see Section 15 of [RFC2616]), and
also the parameter encoding defined in [RFC5987] (see Section 5).
7. IANA Considerations
7.1. Registry for Disposition Values and Parameter
This specification does not introduce any changes to the registration
procedures for disposition values and parameters that are defined in
Section 9 of [RFC2183].
7.2. Header Field Registration
This document updates the definition of the Content-Disposition HTTP
header field in the permanent HTTP header field registry (see
[RFC3864]).
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Header field name: Content-Disposition
Applicable protocol: http
Status: standard
Author/Change controller: IETF
Specification document: this specification (Section 3)
8. Acknowledgements
Thanks to Adam Barth, Rolf Eike Beer, Bjoern Hoehrmann, Alfred
Hoenes, Roar Lauritzsen, Henrik Nordstrom, and Mark Nottingham for
their valuable feedback.
9. References
9.1. Normative References
[ISO-8859-1] International Organization for Standardization,
"Information technology -- 8-bit single-byte coded
graphic character sets -- Part 1: Latin alphabet No.
1", ISO/IEC 8859-1:1998, 1998.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC2616] Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H.,
Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext
Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.
[RFC5987] Reschke, J., "Character Set and Language Encoding for
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Header Field
Parameters", RFC 5987, August 2010.
9.2. Informative References
[RFC2046] Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet
Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media Types",
RFC 2046, November 1996.
[RFC2047] Moore, K., "MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions) Part Three: Message Header Extensions for
Non-ASCII Text", RFC 2047, November 1996.
[RFC2183] Troost, R., Dorner, S., and K. Moore, "Communicating
Presentation Information in Internet Messages: The
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Content-Disposition Header Field", RFC 2183,
August 1997.
[RFC2231] Freed, N. and K. Moore, "MIME Parameter Value and
Encoded Word Extensions: Character Sets, Languages, and
Continuations", RFC 2231, November 1997.
[RFC3629] Yergeau, F., "UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO
10646", STD 63, RFC 3629, November 2003.
[RFC3864] Klyne, G., Nottingham, M., and J. Mogul, "Registration
Procedures for Message Header Fields", BCP 90,
RFC 3864, September 2004.
[RFC3986] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter,
"Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax",
STD 66, RFC 3986, January 2005.
Appendix A. Changes from the RFC 2616 Definition
Compared to Section 19.5.1 of [RFC2616], the following normative
changes reflecting actual implementations have been made:
o According to RFC 2616, the disposition type "attachment" only
applies to content of type "application/octet-stream". This
restriction has been removed, because user agents in practice do
not check the content type, and it also discourages properly
declaring the media type.
o RFC 2616 only allows "quoted-string" for the filename parameter.
This would be an exceptional parameter syntax, and also doesn't
reflect actual use.
o The definition for the disposition type "inline" ([RFC2183],
Section 2.1) has been re-added with a suggestion for its
processing.
o This specification requires support for the extended parameter
encoding defined in [RFC5987].
Appendix B. Differences compared to RFC 2183
Section 2 of [RFC2183] defines several additional disposition
parameters: "creation-date", "modification-date", "quoted-date-time",
and "size". These do not appear to be implemented by any user agent,
thus have been omitted from this specification.
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Appendix C. Alternative Approaches to Internationalization
By default, HTTP header field parameters cannot carry characters
outside the ISO-8859-1 ([ISO-8859-1]) character encoding (see
[RFC2616], Section 2.2). For the "filename" parameter, this of
course is an unacceptable restriction.
Unfortunately, user agent implementers have not managed to come up
with an interoperable approach, although the IETF Standards Track
specifies exactly one solution ([RFC2231], clarified and profiled for
HTTP in [RFC5987]).
For completeness, the sections below describe the various approaches
that have been tried, and explains how they are inferior to the RFC
5987 encoding used in this specification.
C.1. RFC 2047 Encoding
RFC 2047 defines an encoding mechanism for header fields, but this
encoding is not supposed to be used for header field parameters - see
Section 5 of [RFC2047]:
An 'encoded-word' MUST NOT appear within a 'quoted-string'.
...
An 'encoded-word' MUST NOT be used in parameter of a MIME Content-
Type or Content-Disposition field, or in any structured field body
except within a 'comment' or 'phrase'.
In practice, some user agents implement the encoding, some do not
(exposing the encoded string to the user), and some get confused by
it.
C.2. Percent Encoding
Some user agents accept percent encoded ([RFC3986], Section 2.1)
sequences of characters encoded using the UTF-8 ([RFC3629]) character
encoding.
In practice, this is hard to use because those user agents that do
not support it will display the escaped character sequence to the
user.
Furthermore, the first user agent to implement this did choose the
encoding based on local settings; thus making it very hard to use in
multi-lingual environments.
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C.3. Encoding Sniffing
Some user agents inspect the value (which defaults to ISO-8859-1) and
switch to UTF-8 when it seems to be more likely to be the correct
interpretation.
As with the approaches above, this is not interoperable and
furthermore risks misinterpreting the actual value.
C.4. Implementations (to be removed by RFC Editor before publication)
Unfortunately, as of October 2010, neither the encoding defined in
RFCs 2231 and 5987, nor any of the alternate approaches discussed
above was implemented interoperably. Thus, this specification
recommends the approach defined in RFC 5987, which at least has the
advantage of actually being specified properly.
The table below shows the implementation support for the various
approaches:
+---------------+------------+--------+--------------+--------------+
| User Agent | RFC | RFC | Percent | Encoding |
| | 2231/5987 | 2047 | Encoding | Sniffing |
+---------------+------------+--------+--------------+--------------+
| Chrome | no | yes | yes | yes |
| Firefox | yes (*) | yes | no | yes |
| Internet | no | no | yes | no |
| Explorer | | | | |
| Konqueror | yes | no | no | no |
| Opera | yes | no | no | no |
| Safari | no | no | no | yes |
+---------------+------------+--------+--------------+--------------+
(*) Does not implement the fallback behavior to "filename" described
in Section 3.3.
Appendix D. Change Log (to be removed by RFC Editor before publication)
Note: the issues names in the change log entries for
draft-reschke-rfc2183-in-http refer to <http://greenbytes.de/tech/
webdav/draft-reschke-rfc2183-in-http-issues.html>.
D.1. Since draft-reschke-rfc2183-in-http-00
Adjust terminology ("header" -> "header field"). Update rfc2231-in-
http reference.
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D.2. Since draft-reschke-rfc2183-in-http-01
Update rfc2231-in-http reference. Actually define the "filename"
parameter. Add internationalization considerations. Add examples
using the RFC 5987 encoding. Add overview over other approaches,
plus a table reporting implementation status. Add and resolve issue
"nodep2183". Add issues "asciivsiso", "deplboth", "quoted", and
"registry".
D.3. Since draft-reschke-rfc2183-in-http-02
Add and close issue "docfallback". Close issues "asciivsiso",
"deplboth", "quoted", and "registry".
D.4. Since draft-reschke-rfc2183-in-http-03
Updated to be a Working Draft of the IETF HTTPbis Working Group.
D.5. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-content-disp-00
Closed issues:
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/242>: "handling of
unknown disposition types"
Slightly updated the notes about the proposed fallback behavior.
D.6. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-content-disp-01
Various editorial improvements.
D.7. Since draft-ietf-httpbis-content-disp-02
Closed issues:
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/244>: "state that
repeating parameters are invalid"
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/245>: "warn about
%xx in filenames being misinterpreted"
o <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/246>: "mention
control chars when talking about postprecessing the filename
parameter"
Update Appendix C.4; Opera 10.63 RC implements the recommended
fallback behavior.
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Index
C
Content-Disposition header 4
H
Headers
Content-Disposition 4
Author's Address
Julian F. Reschke
greenbytes GmbH
Hafenweg 16
Muenster, NW 48155
Germany
EMail: julian.reschke@greenbytes.de
URI: http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/
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