I am developing a web-based file storage utility and I've come up against a problem. For security the files are stored outside the web-server root but this poses a problem when the user wants to download a file.
The obvious way would be to temporarily move the file to be downloaded so it was accessible from the web and link to it. But this would cause security risks from others being able to download the file also.
I worked out a solution in which the script opens up the file and then prints it out with the correct Content-type header causing a download box to open but this has several drawbacks:
1) The filename of the script (e.g. download.pl) is used instead of the actual filename
2) If the MIME type is recognised e.g. image/gif then the browser will display the file instead of opening a box to download it.

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Rob

In reply to Protect Downloads by r3b3lxd

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