Password protection

common_ground

I need a system where members can only view the contents of certain folders. I.e once logged on you will see the folders you have access to and can download any of the files by clicking on the link to it.
I am familar with the normal membership systems using sessions for allowing access to php pages but this is different because I want to control access to folders with large animation files in up to 2GB

I could do a system that only shows links to the files they have access to once logged on but that does not stop someone geussing the name of the folder/file and pointing their browser at it

I have been looking at using htaccess but I cant get this to work and I cant get much info about it from the hosting.

AstroTeg

Follow your idea with doing links to the files. The difference being this:

The folders with the files are put in a non-web accessible directory. No matter how hard web users try playing with the links, the files just won't be available directly.
Setup a PHP script that checks a user's access (via sessions or whatever you go with). If your chunk of code verifies the user has access to the file, then the same script then does a file read on the file they are looking for and spits it back out to the browser. This script will act like a gateway between the real files and the user (and all users would have to go to this gateway script to download anything). This way, you can control who has access to the files.

common_ground

Thanks why didnt I think off that,stupid I guess

as I said these files are huge and I am not sure what type of files thay are going to be I only know some are CAD some animation. So to spit them out to the browser dont I need to somehow get the file type e.g if it was a png header("Content-type: image/png"); or am I complicating things. Also arent there going to be time out issues

thanks again

AstroTeg

Check out [man]set_time_limit[/man]. It'll wiggle around the 30 second default time out.

As for the file types, application/octet-stream will kick start a download regardless of the file type. This might be a good idea if you're dealing with 2gb files. But in some cases like PNG, JPG, GIF, etc, you may toss in some code to just display it to the browser. And that's just a simple exercise in determining the file type and matching the content type with it.

common_ground

Next time your in Devin Ill buy you a beer !