Question

I am working on a project where the user would be able to buy media files.
after the payment is processed I would like to allow them to download the file.
I guess it is safe to say that I should have a temporary link to the files. one that is linked to the IP of the user and perhaps a timestamp?
the problem is I dont know where to start with that.
First of all. is this the way to do it? if so..how do I proceed using php. ( i guess I dont need the exact script just hints on how to do it although if there is an existing script I would not mind)
thank you.

Answer 1

Since you are going to handle the file in PHP you might aswell use a login to check if the user has purchased the file, other than that the code should look a little like this:

header('Content-Type: application/force-download');

$file = new File(intval($_GET['id']));
$fileLocation = dirname(__FILE__) . "/../../upload/fileArchive/" . $file->id . "." . $file->type;

header('Content-Length:' . filesize($fileLocation));
header("Content-Disposition: inline; filename=\"".$file->name."\"");

$filePointer = fopen($fileLocation,"rb");
fpassthru($filePointer);

Taken from production and tested