Add Support for `Content-Disposition: attachment`

[kairlec]

I use this tool to put my files on the server for downloading on other devices, but when I put text files such as txt, json, etc., I click on it in the browser and it will open the page instead of downloading

Will there be a setting to specify that all files are downloaded instead of opening on the page or specify files with certain suffixes?

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/Headers/Content-Disposition

[patrickdappollonio]

Super interesting stuff! Do you access the resources directly or via the file explorer UI?

Here's my challenge: while I'm tempted to allow a flag to make anything not a markdown or html an attachment, I don't think that's the right approach.

What's the option then? Providing a list of file extensions? I feel something like that could get pretty long (although granted, the yaml config file would support a long list quite nicely).

Then there's the issue that extensions don't really guarantee that a file type is actually what it says it is.

If we were to say "anything clicked through the file explorer UI is downloadable" then we can just add the download anchor via the UI: https://gomakethings.com/how-to-force-a-file-to-download-instead-of-open-in-the-browser-using-only-html/

How would you recommend implementing this, like what would suffice?

[kairlec]

I usually access it via the file explorer ui. On a server without a gui, I will download file with wget ip(host)/file.

I also hope to see the original directory view through curl, but it has been mentioned in another issue.

I think providing the extension is a very common usage. The extension does not guarantee that the file type is actually what it says, but it is very useful for some uncommon extensions.

For example, I have a plug-in package manifest file extension of .tkam used by my own program. It should only be read by the program, but it is essentially a JSON. Clicking it on the page will open it directly instead of downloading it. When I right-click and Save As, Chrome will save the file as file.tkam.txt.

Adding a download anchor should be useful. Maybe it would be nice to add an additional button with a download anchor on the page to fix the browser's behavior to download.

[patrickdappollonio]

I think then a good starting point is a flag called something like --force-download-extensions and then allow passing what extensions you would like to force download. This would be both for the UI mode and for the file explorer mode.

In respect to the UI, I'm not sure I would like to introduce more elements to it, mostly because it has to be friendly for mobile and desktops and on mobiles it's already a bit cluttered.

By allowing to set file extensions to a forced download, it'll essentially work in both places.

I'm putting something together.

[patrickdappollonio]

Done! Version 2.8.0 should have this feature. Would you mind giving it a shot? I'll leave this issue open for a bit.

PS: I'll also try to finish the previous, old ticket around listing the directory rather than rendering the markdown.

[kairlec]

The new feature works well for simple extensions, but I found some confusing points with multiple extensions. For example, I have a js file (example.js) and a compressed js file (example.min.js). If I set min.js, it will not work, and setting js will force all files with js as the extension to be downloaded. After all, the logical match is the extension, not the suffix.

By the way, will there be a wildcard * extension/suffix match or an additional option to force all files to be downloaded?

[patrickdappollonio]

I guess this is the issue I was mentioning before: the "js" is indeed the extension. There isn't such a concept of dual extension although maybe we can make it so it detects a suffix, and not just the actual extension.

min.js isn't really the extension, it's the fact that the file is minified and part of the name, so the Go function to pull file extensions is ignoring it.

It's similar with compressed files with tar.gz. It's two "packings": the first one meaning you should "gunzip" the file to decompress it then "untar" to unpack it into multiple files. The fact that some compression tools can handle these two actions at the same time is just a byproduct of being nice 😆

I also don't think we can support "download them all", or maybe we do, but it's an uphill battle, and if we were to use wildcards, it will be a challenge too: you see, the UI you see where the files are listed is also served by http-server meaning that saying "all js files" would also imply the files from the file server UI. We would have to go out of our way to do it and make sure we're not "overselecting" files... I think it's possible, it's just quite hard to achieve.

Let me think how we can try to achieve all of those. The main challenge I need to figure out is that we recently added the option to use a custom css that's being served by the server. If we were to say "force the download of all css files" then the custom UI css will also be forced to download and couldn't be used as a UI enhancement.

For the wildcard or matching fake extensions like "min.js" we can probably not follow "extensions" per se but more like "suffixes". We have the ability to do wildcards in other places so adding this wouldn't be that hard.

Will keep you posted!