Question

I’m writing a web service that returns a base64-encoded PDF file, so my plan is to add two headers to the response:

Content-Type: application/pdf
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

My question is: Is Content-Transfer-Encoding a valid HTTP header? I think it might only be for MIME. If not, how should I craft my HTTP response to represent the fact that I’m returning a base64-encoded PDF? Thanks.

EDIT:

It looks like HTTP does not support this header. From RFC2616 Section 14:

Note: while the definition of Content-MD5 is exactly the same for HTTP
as in RFC 1864 for MIME entity-bodies, there are several ways in which
the application of Content-MD5 to HTTP entity-bodies differs from its
application to MIME entity-bodies. One is that HTTP, unlike MIME, does
not use Content-Transfer-Encoding, and does use Transfer-Encoding and
Content-Encoding.

Any ideas for what I should set my headers to? Thanks.

EDIT 2

Many of the code samples found in the comments of this PHP reference manual page seem to suggest that it actually is a valid HTTP header:

http://php.net/manual/en/function.header.php

Answer 1

According to RFC 1341 (made obsolete by RFC 2045):

A Content-Transfer-Encoding header field, which can be used to
specify an auxiliary encoding that was applied to the data in order to
allow it to pass through mail transport mechanisms which may have
data or character set limitations.

and later:

Many Content-Types which could usefully be transported via email
are represented, in their "natural" format, as 8-bit character or
binary data. Such data cannot be transmitted over some transport
protocols. For example, RFC 821 restricts mail messages to 7-bit
US-ASCII data with 1000 character lines.

It is necessary, therefore, to define a standard mechanism for
re-encoding such data into a 7-bit short-line format. (…) The
Content-Transfer-Encoding field is used to indicate the type of
transformation that has been used in order to represent the body
in an acceptable manner for transport.

Since you have a webservice, which has nothing in common with emails, you shouldn’t use this header.

You can use Content-Encoding header which indicates that transferred data has been compressed (gzip value).

I think that in your case

Content-Type: application/pdf

is enough. Additionally, you can set Content-Length header, but in my opinion, if you are building webservice (it’s not http server / proxy server) Content-Type is enough. Please bear in mind that some specific headers (e.g. Transfer-Encoding) if not used appropriately, may cause unexpected communication issues, so if you are not 100% sure about usage of some header – if you really need it or not – just don’t use it.