Content-Disposition Filename Parser

Extract a safe basename from Content-Disposition headers, honoring RFC 5987 encoding and rejecting traversal segments.

PythonSecurity Boundaries

Code

snippet
import re
from pathlib import PurePosixPath
from urllib.parse import unquote

NAME_STAR = re.compile(r"filename\*\s*=\s*([^;]+)", re.IGNORECASE)
NAME = re.compile(r'filename\s*=\s*(?:"([^"]*)"|([^;]+))', re.IGNORECASE)


def safe_basename(value: str) -> str | None:
    candidate = PurePosixPath(value.replace("\\", "/")).name.strip()
    if candidate in {"", ".", ".."} or "\x00" in candidate:
        return None
    return candidate


def attachment_filename(header: str) -> str | None:
    match = NAME_STAR.search(header)
    if match:
        value = match.group(1).strip().strip('"')
        charset, _, remainder = value.partition("'")
        _, _, encoded = remainder.partition("'")
        try:
            decoded = unquote(
                encoded or remainder,
                encoding=charset or "utf-8",
                errors="strict",
            )
        except (LookupError, UnicodeDecodeError):
            decoded = unquote(encoded or remainder)
        return safe_basename(decoded)
    match = NAME.search(header)
    if not match:
        return None
    value = match.group(1) if match.group(1) is not None else match.group(2)
    return safe_basename(unquote(value.strip()))


def main() -> None:
    headers = [
        'attachment; filename="report final.pdf"',
        "attachment; filename=../../etc/passwd",
        "attachment; filename*=UTF-8''%E5%B9%B4%E6%8A%A5.pdf",
        'attachment; filename=".."',
    ]
    for header in headers:
        print(attachment_filename(header))


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()