HELP:AUTHENTICATION?

[Anon]

How can I send username and password to Apache?

I've searched this forum and found some pepole have the same question ,but there were no results.

Let me show the detail:
I have a directory that uses Apache Authentication to access,
and this directory has some non-php files providing for users to download,only those users
who logged in can download the files. I don't like using readfile() to force download,
I want users just click the file's URL(link) to download ,so before the users see the URL,
I want php sends the username and password to Apache to pass the Authentication,
and How can I do?

[Anon]

http://username:[e-mail]/password-protected-directory/file.ext

That accesses the file 'file.ext' in the directory 'password-protected-directory' with the username 'username' and password 'password' at 'www.site.com' using http.

I think that's what you wanted. If not, please clarify.

[Anon]

But I mean that I'd not let the user see the username and password,just let php send the username and password to apache, and after send it ,user can use
http://www.site.com/password-protected-directory/file.ext to download the file

And how?