RFC 1806 (rfc1806) - Page 2 of 8

Communicating Presentation Information in Internet Messages: The Content-Disposition Header

Alternative Format: Original Text Document


RFC 1806                  Content-Disposition                  June 1995


   are displayed automatically when the message is viewed. A mechanism
   is needed to allow the sender to transmit this sort of presentational
   information to the recipient; the Content-Disposition header provides
   this mechanism, allowing each component of a message to be tagged
   with an indication of its desired presentation semantics.

   Tagging messages in this manner will often be sufficient for basic
   message formatting. However, in many cases a more powerful and
   flexible approach will be necessary. The definition of such
   approaches is beyond the scope of this memo; however, such approaches
   can benefit from additional Content-Disposition values and
   parameters, to be defined at a later date.

   In addition to allowing the sender to specify the presentational
   disposition of a message component, it is desirable to allow her to
   indicate a default archival disposition; a filename. The optional
   "filename" parameter provides for this.

2.  The Content-Disposition Header Field

   Content-Disposition is an optional header; in its absence, the MUA
   may use whatever presentation method it deems suitable.

   It is desirable to keep the set of possible disposition types small
   and well defined, to avoid needless complexity. Even so, evolving
   usage will likely require the definition of additional disposition
   types or parameters, so the set of disposition values is extensible;
   see below.

   In the extended BNF notation of [RFC 822], the Content-Disposition
   header field is defined as follows:

        disposition := "Content-Disposition" ":"
                       disposition-type
                       *(";" disposition-parm)

        disposition-type := "inline"
                          / "attachment"
                          / extension-token
                          ; values are not case-sensitive

        disposition-parm := filename-parm / parameter

        filename-parm := "filename" "=" value;

   `Extension-token', `parameter' and `value' are defined according to
   [RFC 822] and [RFC 1521].




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