Utility of HTTP header Content-Type application force-download for mobile

Question

I am currently working on a PHP script that allows you to download media contents  video  audio  pictures     from your mobile device by accessing a link   i e  http   www my-web-site com download php id 7ejs8ap  My script worked very vell when I was testing it with recent mobile  Samsung Galaxy S  iPhone 4S  some others     but an error occured on my old mobile Samsung C3050  The media I wanted to download was just an audio mp3 file that I usually download easily   The error appears to be  Unknown content type   So  as my only HTTP header Content-Type was  application force-download   I try to comment this and try again  Then  it works  But now  I am currently asking what this Content-Type means and if it can be mandatory for others mobile  I tested without the Content-Type on the iPhone 4 and it works  but I m not sure of this compatibility for all mobile   Can someone explain me how that Content-Type works  why this isn t a standard MIME or everything else that can help me to be sure this is an optionnal Content-Type for every download  whatever the file  the browser or the device I am downloading on   Thanks everyone   Here is my PHP headers sent    lt  php   Assume that  filename and  filePath are correclty set  header  Content-Description  File Transfer    header  Content-Disposition  attachment  filename     filename          header  Content-Type  application force-download    Non-standard MIME-Type  incompatible with Samsung C3050 for example  Let it commented readfile  filePath     gt    EDIT   I just tried with a Sony Xperia  and the download wasn t successful  I only see the  html-encoded  bytes of my file I want to download  How can I know what content-type I have to use if application octet-stream or application force-download doesn t work

User · Accepted Answer

Content-Type  application force-download means  I  the web server  am going to lie to you  the browser  about what this file is so that you will not treat it as a PDF Word Document MP3 whatever and prompt the user to save the mysterious file to disk instead   It is a dirty hack that breaks horribly when the client doesn t do  save to disk    Use the correct mime type for whatever media you are using  e g  audio mpeg for mp3    Use the Content-Disposition  attachment  etc etc header if you want to encourage the client to download it instead of following the default behaviour

User · Answer

To download a file please use the following code     Store the File name with location in  file variable  It supports all mime type   file    location of file to download  header  Content-Description  File Transfer    header  Content-Type  application octet-stream    header  Content-Disposition  attachment  filename   basename  file    header  Content-Transfer-Encoding  binary    header  Expires  0    header  Cache-Control  must-revalidate  post-check 0  pre-check 0    header  Pragma  public    header  Content-Length      filesize  file    ob clean    flush    readfile  file     To know about Mime types please refer to this link  http   php net manual en function mime-content-type php

User · Answer

application force-download is not a standard MIME type  It s a hack supported by some browsers  added fairly recently   Your question doesn t really make any sense  It s like asking why Internet Explorer 4 doesn t support the latest CSS 3 functionality

[php] Utility of HTTP header "Content-Type: application/force-download" for mobile?

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