Weird MIME type on ajax upload in Codeigniter

Question

I always got an invalid file type error in uploading csv file in codeigniter. I already googled for possible mime types for csv and still nothing works. so I bother echoing the echo $_FILES['userfile']['type']; and I got this MIME type : 'application/force-download'. Below is a snippet from the controller and a snippet from the view

Controller:

public function upload_file()
{

 $status = "";
 $msg = "";
 $file_element_name = 'userfile';

 if (empty($_POST['title']))
 {
  $status = "error";
  $msg = "Please enter a title";
 }

 if ($status != "error")
 {
  $config['upload_path'] = './uploads/csv_list/';
  $config['allowed_types'] = 'gif|jpg|png|doc|txt|.csv';
  $config['max_size']  = 1024 * 8;

  if (!$this->upload->do_upload($file_element_name))
  {
     $status = 'error';
     $msg = $this->upload->display_errors('', '');

  }
  else
  {

        $status = "success";
        $msg = "File successfully uploaded";

  }
  @unlink($_FILES[$file_element_name]);
  }
  echo json_encode(array('status' => $status, 'msg' => $msg));
}

View:

  <input type="text" name="title" id="title" value="a" style ="display:none"/>

<p>
  <input type="text" name="title" id="title" value="a" style ="display:none"/>  
  <label for="userfile">Upload CSV File</label>
  <input type="file" name="userfile" id="userfile" size="20" />
  <input type="submit" name="submit" id="submit" value ="Upload"/>
</p>

<script>
    $(function () {
        $('#upload_file').submit(function (e) {
            e.preventDefault();
            $.ajaxFileUpload({
                url: '../upload/upload_file/',
                secureuri: false,
                fileElementId: 'userfile',
                dataType: 'json',
                data: {
                    'title': $('#title').val()
                },
                success: function (data, status) {
                    if (data.status != 'error') {
                        $('#files').html('<p>Reloading files...</p>');
                        // refresh_files();
                        // $("#userfile").replaceWith("<input type=\"file\" id=\"userfile\" size =    \"20\" />");
                        $('#files').html('File Uploaded');
                        // $('#title').val('');
                    }
                    alert(data.msg);
                }
            });
            return false;
        });
    });
</script>

Answer 1

The problem here is that different web browser gets different ideas on what type a file is. Since CodeIgniter's upload class is dependent of file types, this can get messy.

I followed several instruction to add more types to the fields in the config/ but neither did the trick.

I ended up with allowing all types $config['allowed_types'] = '*' and validated like this instead:

if (in_array(end(explode('.', $str_file_name)), array('php')))
    return FALSE;

or in your case:

$arr_validate = array('gif', 'jpg', 'png', 'doc', 'txt', 'csv');

if ( ! in_array(end(explode('.', $str_file_name)), $arr_validate))
    return FALSE;