Hi all, I'm in development of a file download site script much like rapidshare. The one area I'm having problems with is permitting download managers to download files which can only be accessed through a user account. i.e. you currently log into the site and choose to download a file through your account. To hide the direct file url and log downloads, the download link is actually a php script which looks up the file and outputs it as a download. This however causes problems with download managers as since the DM does not know the user is logged in, the file download is blocked. Does anyone therefore know of a method to allow download managers to successfully download files via a user protected area? I'm aware there is a username/password option on DM however this doesn't seem to be passed to the script? Thanks in advance.
You can't. The only option is to generate a unique ID for each user and check that ID when downloading. Download managers don't hold sessions/cookies like browsers do. Peace,
Thanks for the response. I had a feeling there wouldn't be a way with session/cookies. Saying that though if I choose to download something via a DM using rapidshare and dont tell the DM my rapidshare username/password it fails. As soon as I add my username/password it works fine so I would assume they get submitted to the download url somehow?
i had exactly this problem, in that download managers dont use cookies. but with Rapidshare, they use authorisation with login and pass - although i don't know how! i tried passing the PHPSESSID in the url for a file download via PHP, e.g. http://mydomain.com/?PHPSESSID=0b4ec5e2s1c6592b10ea4s&file=myfile.rar and even though it works for me (resuming, etc.) some users reported not being able to resume or getting a 416 error.