Use of the Content-Disposition Header Field in the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
RFC 6266

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)                        J. Reschke
Request for Comments: 6266                                    greenbytes
Updates: 2616                                                  June 2011
Category: Standards Track
ISSN: 2070-1721

           Use of the Content-Disposition Header Field in the
                   Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)

Abstract

   RFC 2616 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.

Status of This Memo

   This is an Internet Standards Track document.

   This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
   (IETF).  It represents the consensus of the IETF community.  It has
   received public review and has been approved for publication by the
   Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG).  Further information on
   Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741.

   Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
   and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
   http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6266.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2011 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.

Reschke                      Standards Track                    [Page 1]
RFC 6266               Content-Disposition in HTTP             June 2011

Table of Contents

   1. Introduction ....................................................2
   2. Notational Conventions ..........................................3
   3. Conformance and Error Handling ..................................3
   4. Header Field Definition .........................................3
      4.1. Grammar ....................................................4
      4.2. Disposition Type ...........................................5
      4.3. Disposition Parameter: 'Filename' ..........................5
      4.4. Disposition Parameter: Extensions ..........................6
      4.5. Extensibility ..............................................7
   5. Examples ........................................................7
   6. Internationalization Considerations .............................8
   7. Security Considerations .........................................8
   8. IANA Considerations .............................................8
      8.1. Registry for Disposition Values and Parameters .............8
      8.2. Header Field Registration ..................................8
   9. Acknowledgements ................................................9
   10. References .....................................................9
      10.1. Normative References ......................................9
      10.2. Informative References ....................................9
   Appendix A. Changes from the RFC 2616 Definition ..................11
   Appendix B. Differences Compared to RFC 2183 ......................11
   Appendix C. Alternative Approaches to Internationalization ........11
     C.1. RFC 2047 Encoding ..........................................12
     C.2. Percent Encoding ...........................................12
     C.3. Encoding Sniffing ..........................................12
   Appendix D. Advice on Generating Content-Disposition Header
               Fields ................................................13

1.  Introduction

   RFC 2616 defines the Content-Disposition response header field
   (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 (UAs), 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.