31519 - Save as: should add extension to match content type

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Core Graveyard :: File Handling, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Jesse Ruderman]

If the extension of a webpage document isn't given in the URL, or if the 
extension in the URL doesn't match one of the recognized extensions for the 
content, mozilla should add an extension to make the saved file be the correct 
type to ensure that nothing gets lost.

URL                          DEFAULT          FILE TYPE

http://foo.bar/              index.html       Webpage (*.html, *.htm)
http://foo.bar/index.html    index.html       Webpage (*.html, *.htm)
http://foo.bar/index.htm     index.htm        Webpage (*.html, *.htm)
http://foo.bar/cgi/cgi.exe   cgi.exe.html     Webpage (*.html, *.htm)
http://foo.bar/cgi/cgi.cgi   cgi.cgi.html     Webpage (*.html, *.htm)
http://foo.bar/cgi/image.cgi image.cgi.gif    GIF Image (*.gif)    depending on
http://foo.bar/cgi/image.cgi image.cgi.jpg    JPG Image (*.jpg)    the image

For each of those, there would also be an "all files (*.*)" option.

I'm not sure how much of this is specific to Win32.

This should probably only apply to http and https.

Comment 1

[Doron Rosenberg (IBM)]

moving to XPapps, should belong there.

Comment 2

[Paul MacQuiddy]

es una dupa, sairuh?

Comment 3

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

bug exists for index files not getting name (and extension): bug 24817.

bill, d'you remember the bug for cgi file saving? it rings familiar...

Comment 4

[Bill Law]

Yes, and I speculated that I had such a bug in comments I added to yet another 
bug like this one.  However, I can't find any such bug in my current list.  So, 
I think we should keep this one, especially since it does such a good job of 
mentioning *all* the problem areas.

Comment 5

[Jesse Ruderman]

One thing I forgot to mention explicitly: if a URL ends in .gif but the server 
gives sends jpeg image (along with a content-type consistent with jpeg), the 
file should be saved as *.jpg or as *.gif.jpg, because most (Win32?) programs 
won't figure out that the extension is wrong when trying to read the file later.

I've never actually seen a site put bogus extensions in its URLs, but I 
wouldn't be surprised to see a site try to prevent its users from saving images 
this way.

Comment 6

[Jason Heard]

I disagree with this idea.  I remember back in IE 3.x somewhere where it was 
impossible to save some files because the browser insisted that it wanted to 
add an extension of its own choosing.  If this goes in, it should be a 
preference.

Jason

Comment 7

[Jesse Ruderman]

Well, I'm sure this would be done in mozilla in a way that wouldn't prevent you 
from removing the added extension.

Comment 8

[Jesse Ruderman]

according to bug 22861, it is possible for cgi scripts to suggest a filename.

Comment 9

[timeless]

wrt Jason Heard, I presume that this is only a suggested file name/type, and 
since the user can select some other type and some other name....

I also expect we support save as "this.arbitrary", where the quotes force the 
dropdown specified extension to be ignored, so the file gets the exact name 
typed w/in the quotes.

Comment 10

[Jesse Ruderman]

Related: bug 67901, "When saving files, file widget should be initialized with 
page title" (instead of with filename on server).

Comment 11

[Jesse Ruderman]

See also bug 87888, file extension in content-disposition header not used in 
file-picker filter

Comment 12

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

->giving to mscott for the nonce, while bill is away...

Comment 13

[Ariel Gonzalez]

I agree that it should automagically detect what type of file it's dealing with
and providing the default extension.

This would be best when dealing with ASPs or CGIs that give you images but don't
really include the extension anywhere in the url. Maybe you could get what type
of image it is from ImgLib and give that as the default.

Maybe even do the same thing with text, like if a page has no HTML tags in there
or no shell commands or something suggest saving as .txt

Comment 14

[timeless]

on windows the mime type registry goes from mimetype to default extension, we 
should use that for matching.

Comment 15

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

spam: over to File Handling. i have not changed the assigned developer [or the
other fields for that matter], so if anyone realizes that a bug should have a
more appropriate owner, go ahead and change it. :)

Comment 16

[Ashley Bischoff (blog at handcoding.com)]

*** Bug 106867 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 17

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

This is now fixed, modulo bug 57113.  The fix landed as part of the "save
complete page" changes.

Comment 18

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

rs vrfy --related / newer bugs are filed separately.