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A view for downloading attachment

Author:
achimnol
Posted:
September 1, 2009
Language:
Python
Version:
1.1
Score:
7 (after 7 ratings)

This view snippet is a helper for implementing file download handlers. There is a standard to encode Unicode filenames properly, but many browsers have different protocols.

The default encoding is assumed to be UTF-8.

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import mimetypes
from django.http import HttpResponse

def respond_as_attachment(request, file_path, original_filename):
    fp = open(file_path, 'rb')
    response = HttpResponse(fp.read())
    fp.close()
    type, encoding = mimetypes.guess_type(original_filename)
    if type is None:
        type = 'application/octet-stream'
    response['Content-Type'] = type
    response['Content-Length'] = str(os.stat(file_path).st_size)
    if encoding is not None:
        response['Content-Encoding'] = encoding

    # To inspect details for the below code, see http://greenbytes.de/tech/tc2231/
    if u'WebKit' in request.META['HTTP_USER_AGENT']:
        # Safari 3.0 and Chrome 2.0 accepts UTF-8 encoded string directly.
        filename_header = 'filename=%s' % original_filename.encode('utf-8')
    elif u'MSIE' in request.META['HTTP_USER_AGENT']:
        # IE does not support internationalized filename at all.
        # It can only recognize internationalized URL, so we do the trick via routing rules.
        filename_header = ''
    else:
        # For others like Firefox, we follow RFC2231 (encoding extension in HTTP headers).
        filename_header = 'filename*=UTF-8\'\'%s' % urllib.quote(original_filename.encode('utf-8'))
    response['Content-Disposition'] = 'attachment; ' + filename_header
    return response

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Comments

jreschke (on July 12, 2011):

RFC2231 encoding can be used with Chrome (since ~9) and IE (since ~9) as well.

The only major UA left that does not is Safari.

#

asfaltboy (on July 6, 2015):

Nice snippet, but I suggest using a bit more longer filename_header which includes both filename= and filename*= parameters, in that order, for easy legacy support without attempting to switch on User Agent.

#

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