Question

I’m building a web site from the old one and i need to show a lot of .pdf files.

I need users to get authenficated before the can’t see any of my .pdf but i don’t know how (and i can’t put my pdf in my database).

I’m using Pylons with Python.

Thank for you help.

If you have any question, ask me! 🙂

Answer 1

Here’s my stab at how to do it in Pylons. I haven’t tested this but there should be enough links to get you going.

1. Enable X-SendFile on your HTTP server (as Paul said, the implementation depends on the server): Apache mod_xsendfile, Nginx equivalent
2. Put the PDFs outside the /public directory in your Pylons install (I’d suggest a directory at the same level as your Pylons directory)
3. Add some kind of Authentication and Authorization to your site. Here is a good article on how you use repoze.who (Authentication) and repoze.what (Authorization)
4. Create a route and controller to handle the request for your PDF, this is like any other route and controller. (ie a route of /pdfs/{filename}.pdf)
5. If everything is authorized and authenticated properly you can create the right headers for the x-sendfile (or equivalent) you are using.