APACHE: Password protect folders

bodmin has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

is there any way to password protect a folder using apache on Unix using perl?

I have documents (gif's jpg's doc's etc) I wish to store in a secure folder. I am using cgi::session so know when a user is logged in and allowed to view the documents.

How do I only allow logged in users to view the files in the folder and not any random joe bloggs? Thought about storing the docs as BLOGs in a db, but keep getting told it is not practical for large docs.

Any ideas or suggestions, or reccomendations on places to look for more info?

Thanks,

Comment on APACHE: Password protect folders

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Re: APACHE: Password protect folders by Fletch (Bishop) on Jun 18, 2004 at 15:42 UTC
Has nothing to do with perl (per se). The apache documentation covers how to do authentication rather well.	[reply]
Re: APACHE: Password protect folders by Callum (Chaplain) on Jun 18, 2004 at 15:45 UTC
You may need to tweak how you handle authentication, but look at Apache access authentication	[reply]
Re: APACHE: Password protect folders by hardburn (Abbot) on Jun 18, 2004 at 16:42 UTC
With mod_perl, you can add an authentication handler for a given directory. See: http://perl.apache.org/docs/1.0/guide/security.html. ---- send money to your kernel via the boot loader.. This and more wisdom available from Markov Hardburn.	[reply]
Re: APACHE: Password protect folders by tachyon (Chancellor) on Jun 19, 2004 at 05:53 UTC
Super Search for htaccess and/or htpasswd. There is plenty of stuff on this site about it as well as in the Apache docs to which you have already been referred. You will find some Perl code that implements creating .htaccess and .htpasswd files at run htpasswd as unix command in the program amongst other locations. There are also Apache::Htaccess and Apache::Htpasswd for a more robust solution. cheers tachyon	[reply]