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

I think you are on the right track with caching:

This knowledge base article may help you, Internet Explorer is unable to open Office documents from an SSL Web site

Mentioned in this Stack Overflow question: Cannot open xls file in IE

Answer 2

I had the same issue with IE8. I made small changes to my code.

Response.ClearHeaders(); //needed, otherwise "no-cache: set-cookie" was there, had to get rid of it

Response.addHeader("Cache-Control", "private");

Answer 3

I hade the same problem. After set "Content-Disposition" and "Content-Type", add this code.

Java code

// IE requires these three lines, exactly like this
response.setHeader("CookiesConfigureNoCache", "false");             
response.setHeader("Pragma","private,no-cache");     
response.setHeader("Cache-control","private,no-store,no-cache,max-age=0,must-revalidate");

PHP code

// IE requires these three lines, exactly like this
header("CookiesConfigureNoCache: false");
header("Pragma: private,no-cache");
header("Cache-control: private,no-store,no-cache,max-age=0,must-revalidate");

Answer 4

Here's what I've done in my PHP code:

header( "HTTP/1.0 200 OK" );
header( "Content-Disposition: inline; filename=$path" );
header( "Content-Type: attachment; application/pdf" );
header( "Content-Length: $info[7]" );
header( "Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache" );          // IE 8 requires these two lines, exactly like this
header( "Pragma: private" );                            // IE 8 requires these two lines, exactly like this
readfile( $tmpfile );

Answer 5

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", ...);
   

Answer 6

Had the exact same issue when the app server was configured to use SSL. The trick for me to get it working after the https was turned on:

   string attachment = "attachment; filename=" + rptName + ".xls" + "";    

    HttpContext.Current.Response.Clear();
    HttpContext.Current.Response.ClearHeaders();
    HttpContext.Current.Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", attachment);
    HttpContext.Current.Response.AddHeader("Cache-Control", "private, max-age=1");

    HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.ms-excel";

    HttpContext.Current.Response.Charset = "";
    HttpContext.Current.Response.Buffer = true;
    HttpContext.Current.Response.Cache.SetExpires(DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(1));