Re: How to prevent direct access..

Chuck wrote:

I have a php file that produces an image and is only referred to from an img tag like so: <img src="getRandImage.php"> I want to prevent anyone from directly accessing the getRandImage.php file. The file has to be world readable or the image will not display. I played around with testing $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] using regular expressions but the above image tag appears in the default splash page and there is no http referer set when they first visit the site. (also ran into some IE quirkiness as well) I played around with putting getRandImage.php into a subdirectory that is only viewable by the user the web server is running as and the image also would not appear. I couldn't figure out a way to embed this into a function that could be hidden in a non-world readable subdirectory -- which would be my preferred approach. (Is there a way to call a php function that returns an image from within an img tag, instead of calling a php file?) I can easily check http request type but the img tag is doing a GET request which is also what request type is used if they try and directly access the URL. I'm sure its something simple I am overlooking. Maybe another $_SERVER variable or something I can work with. fyi: running php 5.2.5 and apache 2.2. Thanks for any help.. /CC

I would do something like what Nathan said, but with a twist. From the page with the anchor tag, I would use a unique value in the image URL, but I would store that value in my session, along with a timestamp of when it was generated. Then, in the getRandImage.php script, I would check to see if the unique value in the session exists? if no, then boot them else then check to see if it is expired. if yes, boot them, else display random image and delete unique value and timestamp. Then, it doesn't matter if they access the URL directly, if they do, they won't have a value in there session. Because the only place that the value gets set is in the original calling HTML page. -- Jim Lucas "Some men are born to greatness, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene V by William Shakespeare