Secure Downloads

Downloads can be restricted using resource buckets.

If, for example, you had a members site for a club or sports team, you could have a secure resource bucket into which anything for members only would be uploaded (AGM minutes, newsletters etc).

You’d then use a short download script to deliver those files to the browser, and that script would check that the member has permission to access that bucket.

Setting up the resource bucket

First, you’ll need to create a new bucket that stores its files outside the web root. If you don’t have a perch/config/buckets.php file, create one like the example below. The secure folder should be above the public_html folder, i.e. outside of your web root.

<?php
return array(
    'secure' => array(
        'web_path'  => '/members/download.php?file=',
        'file_path' => '/path/to/sites/secure',
    ),
);
?>

Then you’d need a template for uploading the files in the normal way. Our bucket is called secure, so we use that in our template tag:

<a href="<perch:content id="file" type="file" label="File" order="2" bucket="secure">">
      <perch:content type="text" id="desc" label="Title" order="1" required title>
  </a>

On the front end of you site, this will produce a link to something like

/members/download.php?file=/members_contact_details.pdf

The download.php example file included with the app checks that the member is logged in before streaming the file. You could also check for a tag, for example. See the source of the download.php for an example.