Question

I am serving .pdf docs to users through anchor tags. However, serving the full document path through the anchor tag exposes the server directory structure. Here is a sample doc location:
mydomain.com/_webstuff/docs/proj03/sub01/111.pdf

I am attempting to create an .htaccess that accepts the “proj03/sub01/111.pdf” portion, and redirects to the above full URI.

The HTML, then, would look like this:

View <a href="proj03/sub01/111.pdf">111.pdf</a>

This is the unworking htaccess:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /fetch.php?f=$1

FETCH.PHP looks like this:

<?php
$f = $_GET['f'];
echo '<meta HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" content="0; url=_webstuff/docs/' . $f . '">';

I’m sure there’s a much better way to do this.

EDIT:
MEA CULPA. My error was this: I had to add a slash before the url in FETCH.PHP, as follows:

NEW FETCH.PHP

<?php
$f = $_GET['f'];
echo '<meta HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" content="0; url=/_webstuff/docs/' . $f . '">';

HOWEVER… My design is still wrong, because the document shows the true document path in the address bar. That is, when the .pdf document is displayed in the browser window, the fully qualified URI is there for all to see. I’m too clever by half. Loop back to my earlier comment: “I’m sure there’s a much better way to do this.”

Suggestions?

Answer 1

If you want to just match some patterns, this would do.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([a-z0-9]*)/([a-z0-9]*)/([a-z0-9]*).pdf$ /_webstuff/docs/$1/$2/$3.pdf [NC,L]

This would match /projNum/subNum/filename.pdf and rewrite the URI. For this sort of rewrite, the viewer wouldn’t see the rewritten URI.