IE8 download filename become garbage if it's a Japanese name - php

Question

I have set up my database collation to utf8_unicode_ci, and on my CakePHP database setup.
class DATABASE_CONFIG {
public $default = array(
'datasource' => 'Database/Mysql',
'persistent' => false,
'host' => 'xxx',
'login' => 'xxx',
'password' => 'xxx',
'database' => 'thisisdatabase',
'prefix' => '',
'encoding' => 'utf8',
);
}
I set up download binary file like this:
$this->viewClass = 'Media';
$params = array(
'id' => $download_list[0],
'download' => true,
'extension' => $download_file_ext,
'path' => $fileDownloadPath . DS,
);
$this->set($params);
When the user uploads a file, the filename will be recorded in the database as unicode-utf8. When I download through Chrome, FF, it comes out fine (the Japanese name will still be intact). But when I download through IE, the filename is garbage. Although the file itself is fine (I can open it, etc).
Anyone know how to solve this?

Answer 1

I am not sure about how CakePHP handles this scenario, but IE has problems with sending Unicode letters in filename header for content-disposition: attachment. So to fix this in IE, we need to url-encode the filename before setting it into the header:
$filename = 'someunicodefilename.txt';
if(// IE) {
$filename = urlencode($filename);
}
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="' . $filename . '"');
So I am not sure how to achieve this in CakePHP, but you can try this:
$this->viewClass = 'Media';
$filename = 'someunicodefilename.txt';
if(// IE) {
$filename = urlencode($filename);
}
$params = array(
'id' => $download_list[0],
'name' => $filename,
'download' => true,
'extension' => $download_file_ext,
'path' => $fileDownloadPath . DS,
);
$this->set($params);