Why doesn't Content-Disposition header work in IE 8?

Question

I'm trying to stream a text file (CSV) to the response, and the following code works perfectly in Firefox 3, but when I use IE, it looks like it wants to download the actual .aspx page, and complains that the file contents don't match the file extension or type. If I then choose to download the file anyway, it correctly downloads the CSV data and opens it in Excel. What am I doing wrong?

    DataTable dt = ExtensionsProvider.ListPrivateCallCostsForCsv(reportFilter.BusinessUnit, reportFilter.StartDate,
                                                             reportFilter.EndDate);
    Response.Clear();
    Response.Buffer = true;
    Response.ContentType = "text/csv";
    Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "filename=" + GetExportFileName()); 
    DataTableHelper.WriteCsv(dt, Response.Output, false);
    Response.End();

score 9 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:08

Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "filename=" + GetExportFileName());

Should be:

Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment;filename=" + GetExportFileName());

Without a main Content-Disposition value, IE will just use the trailing part of the URL — something.aspx — as a filename.

(The above assumes GetExportFileName() returns a sanitised filename stripped of most punctuation. What can go in a header parameter as token or quoted-string in IE is a matter of some annoyance; see this question for details)

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 14 '13 at 13:33

0

It does not work with inline either. Of course it works for all other browsers

HttpServletResponse response = aCtx.getResponse();
response.setContentType("text/plain");
response.addHeader("Content-Disposition", "inline;filename=log.txt");

answered Jun 14 '13 at 13:33

Alberto Godar

249
1
7

score -1 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 30 '09 at 18:49

You have to give the value for the Content-Disposition header, in addition to the filename parameter.

You may have more luck with the "inline" value than the "attachment" value:

Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "inline;filename=" + GetExportFileName());

Why doesn't Content-Disposition header work in IE 8?

3 Answers3

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