Posted by David T. Ashley on 11/17/06 19:49

I've used Apache with the automatic directory indexes ... works great ...
just click on the file name and IE magically figures out how to display it
.... if it is a .PDF then Adobe Acrobat runs, etc.

However, I'd like to "serve" files in a more restrictive context where:

a)The user has to have a valid session identifier in order to get a file.

b)The files I'd be serving aren't in directories that Apache can get to
directly, i.e. not in a "Document Root" or aliased directory (although it
has the right permissions to get the files).

Is it possible to do this with PHP?

Can PHP just spit out the right MIME information and then somehow open and
encode the file and the client will treat it properly?

Are there any PHP functions that help with the encoding?

Are there any good web references?

Thanks

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