How to encode the filename parameter of Content-Disposition header in HTTP?

Question

Web applications that want to force a resource to be downloaded rather than directly rendered in a Web browser issue a Content-Disposition hea

Answer 1

Classic ASP Solution

Most modern browsers support passing the Filename as UTF-8 now but as was the case with a File Upload solution I use that was based on FreeASPUpload.Net (site no longer exists, link points to archive.org) it wouldn't work as the parsing of the binary relied on reading single byte ASCII encoded strings, which worked fine when you passed UTF-8 encoded data until you get to characters ASCII doesn't support.

However I was able to find a solution to get the code to read and parse the binary as UTF-8.

Public Function BytesToString(bytes)    'UTF-8..
  Dim bslen
  Dim i, k , N 
  Dim b , count 
  Dim str

  bslen = LenB(bytes)
  str=""

  i = 0
  Do While i < bslen
    b = AscB(MidB(bytes,i+1,1))

    If (b And &HFC) = &HFC Then
      count = 6
      N = b And &H1
    ElseIf (b And &HF8) = &HF8 Then
      count = 5
      N = b And &H3
    ElseIf (b And &HF0) = &HF0 Then
      count = 4
      N = b And &H7
    ElseIf (b And &HE0) = &HE0 Then
      count = 3
      N = b And &HF
    ElseIf (b And &HC0) = &HC0 Then
      count = 2
      N = b And &H1F
    Else
      count = 1
      str = str & Chr(b)
    End If

    If i + count - 1 > bslen Then
      str = str&"?"
      Exit Do
    End If

    If count>1 then
      For k = 1 To count - 1
        b = AscB(MidB(bytes,i+k+1,1))
        N = N * &H40 + (b And &H3F)
      Next
      str = str & ChrW(N)
    End If
    i = i + count
  Loop

  BytesToString = str
End Function

Credit goes to Pure ASP File Upload by implementing the BytesToString() function from include_aspuploader.asp in my own code I was able to get UTF-8 filenames working.

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Useful Links

• Multipart/form-data and UTF-8 in a ASP Classic application

• Unicode, UTF, ASCII, ANSI format differences