Uses of content-disposition in an HTTP response header

http http-headers httpwebresponse httpresponse content-disposition
Ronnie Overby picture Ronnie Overby · Jun 18, 2009 · Viewed 222.9k times · Source

I have found the following asp.net code to be very useful when serving files from a database:

Response.AppendHeader("content-disposition", "attachment; filename=" + fileName);

This lets the user save the file to their computer and then decide how to use it, instead of the browser trying to use the file.

What other things can be done with the content-disposition response header?

Answer

Andrew Austin picture Andrew Austin · Jun 18, 2009

Note that RFC 6266 supersedes the RFCs referenced below. Section 7 outlines some of the related security concerns.

The authority on the content-disposition header is RFC 1806 and RFC 2183. People have also devised content-disposition hacking. It is important to note that the content-disposition header is not part of the HTTP 1.1 standard.

The HTTP 1.1 Standard (RFC 2616) also mentions the possible security side effects of content disposition:

15.5 Content-Disposition Issues

RFC 1806 [35], from which the often implemented Content-Disposition
(see section 19.5.1) header in HTTP is derived, has a number of very
serious security considerations. Content-Disposition is not part of
the HTTP standard, but since it is widely implemented, we are
documenting its use and risks for implementors. See RFC 2183 [49]
(which updates RFC 1806) for details.

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