securing files

guycaris

I am setting up a site which provides rights managed images. I need to secure these files until i have recived confirmation of payment from worldpay, and then provide a link to the purchaser. I can not think how to go about doing this at all. Can anyone give me any advice on where to start with this.
Many thanks in advance

Guy.

maxpup979

You could simply chmod the files so that they can't be seen--once you receive payment, you automatically go out and then make the files viewable

guycaris

Thanks. Do you know if it would be possible to do something like putting each image in its own user group and then automatically adding a user to the group with chmod when payments is recived? Would this be very innefficient considering there will be thousands of images?
Thanks
Guy

drawmack

why not put the files into the database, then just create a table called users to files and once payment is received you turn on their access to the file

guycaris

So if if were to place the image filename and the user into a table and check ifexists to allow access, but how would i deny and allow access of users typing the url straight into the browser?? (sorry if i'm missing the point here).

drawmack

put the actual file itself into the database then it requires a php script to access it.

http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/php/2000/09/15/php_mysql.html

suntra

I would suggest this : put the images in a directory that is not accessible from your Web server. Then, when people can access images, with PHP, you open one of the files, read the content, and show it.

Example :

Your Web server root :
C:/Apache/HtDocs/

Your images files :
C:/Apache/Private/images/

PHP script :

<?
header("Content-type: image/gif"); // depends on your images gif? jpeg? png? bmp? ...?
$filename = "C:/Apache/Private/images/image_name.extension";
$fp = fopen($filename, "rb");
echo fread($fp, filesize($filename));
fclose($fp);
?>

With that script, don't output anything else !

EDIT : corrected some mistakes...

guycaris

Thanks a lot, i'm going to give both of these a go.
Cheers
Guy