[Zope-dev] IE and Zope MIME type handling

[Paul Erickson]

I agree with solution #2.  When I upload a .xls file from Mozilla on 
Linux, it also says that it is application/octet-stream.

Even more annoying:  Netscape 4.7.x says that it is 
"application/vnd.ms-excel", while Konqueror says "application/ms-excel" 
for the same file.  For sites that want to enforce, it makes me think 
that it might be better to do #2 even for non octet mime types.

-Paul

Casey Duncan wrote:

>Problem: Getting Zope to properly detect MIME types of posted files
>
>The current solution is to try the following methods:
>
>1. See if the browser specified a type and if so, use it.
>2. See if the file extension can be recognized and derive a mime-type from it
>3. Do some inspection of the file data (limited to text files at present)
>
>Obviously #1 is preferred, and anytime the browser supplies the mime type, 
>method #2 and #3 are never used. However, I have found a problem with this. 
>Sometimes, IE reports a mime-type of "application/octet-stream" on files that 
>is doesn't know better about.
>
>This specifically happens on WordPerfect files. Now, I am as shocked as you 
>are that a competitor's file format would not be recognized by IE, however, 
>difficult as this may be to believe, it appears to be true.
>
>My proposed solution and change in behavior is to ignore the browser supplied 
>type if it is "application/octet-stream" and use #2 and perhaps #3 in that 
>case to delve in further. Obviously this may pose a problem for applications 
>that rely on the mime-type for files with extensions that might otherwise 
>indicate something else. But since this behavior seems restricted to IE 
>(amongst the browsers I tested), I doubt it would cause harm or breakage.
>
>Thoughts?
>
>I will supply the necessary patches if there is no objection.
>
>/---------------------------------------------------\
>  Casey Duncan, Sr. Web Developer
>  National Legal Aid and Defender Association
>  c.duncan@nlada.org
>\---------------------------------------------------/
>
>_______________________________________________
>Zope-Dev maillist  -  Zope-Dev@zope.org
>http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev
>**  No cross posts or HTML encoding!  **
>(Related lists - 
> http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce
> http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
>