IE cannot download files over SSL served by WebSphere

Question

IE 7 & 8 both throw an error when users attempt to download a csv file over https.

Internet Explorer cannot download downloadPage.jsf. Internet Explor

Answer 1

It appears that WebSphere automatically adds Cache-Control:no-cache=set-cookie response header when cookies are included in the response. IE8 & older do not like this when downloading over SSL.

There are two possible fixes as per this IBM Developerworks forum thread:

1. Add the custom response header CookiesConfigureNoCache:false for HTTP transport Channel in WebSphere (it's true by default).

   response.setHeader("CookiesConfigureNoCache", "false");             
   

2. Explicitly set the Cache-Control header after cookies are being added, this will override the WebSphere-set one.

   response.addCookie(...);
   response.addCookie(...);
   ...
   response.setHeader("Cache-Control", ...);