AddType application/x-xpinstall .xpi

But the problem was that my server (godaddy) for some mysterious reasons was not recognizing the above directive. Searching around I found that godaddy has some restrictions on the various htaccess directives (yuck!). After fiddling for some time I finally had to try another solution.

What the Apache ‘AddType’ directive does is that it maps the given filename extension onto the specified MIME content type, so that the browser can understand what it is supposed to do with the content. If we could replicate that in PHP than we are good. A possible solution that worked for me is shown below. You can also use the idea for other MIME types.

<?php
 
 
/* File we want to send to the browser */
$filename = "codediesel.xpi";
 
 
/**
 * The following header is required for browsers that do not
 * recognize the xpi extension. i.e all browsers other than Firefox.
 * This will display the familiar 'save/open' dialog if the xpi
 * extension is not supported.
 */
header("Content-Disposition: filename={$filename}");
 
 
/* Tell the browser that the content that is coming is an xpinstall */
header('Content-type: application/x-xpinstall');
 
 
/* Also send the content length */
header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($filename));
 
 
/* readfile reads the file content and echos it to the output */
readfile($filename);
 
?>

Of course if the filesize is large the readfile function could possibly incur a performance hit. But for small files it works good.