Access/Download server files, not in site root, with PHP
- by user271619
Usually I save documents (images, mpegs, excel, word docs, etc...) for my friends or family on my website's root, inside a directory called /files/ or something similar. Nothing too uncommon.
But, I have been playing with user session control, and allowing users to upload files to the dedicated /files/ directory. (the file names are saved in a db, with that user's ID)
But, that means other people could try to guess and locate other people's files.
I do randomize the file names, upon upload. And I stop the apache from displaying the /files/ directory content.
However, I'd like to start saving the files outside of the website's root. This way it can't be accessible via the browser.
I don't have any code to show, but I didn't want to even start on this endeavor if it's not able to be accomplished. I did find this snippet that shows how to display an image, from outside your website root:
$file = $_GET['file'];
$fileDir = '/path/to/files/';
if (file_exists($fileDir . $file))
{
// Note: You should probably do some more checks
// on the filetype, size, etc.
$contents = file_get_contents($fileDir . $file);
// Note: You should probably implement some kind
// of check on filetype
header('Content-type: image/jpeg');
echo $contents;
}
?
Maybe I can use this for any file type, but has anyone heard of a better way to allow users (logged in) to access their files from online, but not letting other users has similar access?
