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[nycphp-talk] protecting download directory in PHP app on Unix box?

Kristina Anderson ka at kacomputerconsulting.com
Wed May 28 11:25:21 EDT 2008


This might be off topic as well...but I have a PHP app that submits to 
Paypal and then on the "thank you" page, I provide a link to a PDF that 
they bought.

The server is Unix based, and before submitting the sale, I collect 
various information about the user, and then when the transaction is 
complete, I get a unique transaction ID from Paypal.

What's the easiest, quickest way to provide some level of complexity to 
the downloads so that people can't just go back into the directory and 
download every PDF without paying?  It doesn't have to be 100% secure 
but should be secure enough to keep out "most" people.

I've been looking into .htaccess but wondering if that's overkill and 
there isn't some way to authenticate against my DB information before 
allowing the download?

-- Kristina 



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