Question

In my application users have their own “websites” which can be reached if they are signed in.

However, since these websites are just directories containing html and other documents everyone in the world can reach them if they know the address. I can’t have that 🙂 A user should be able to decide whether or not thw world might see their files or not.

Can I use .htaccess to activate a PHP-script every time a request is made to that directory?

I.e. if reqested-site is “/websites/{identifier}”, run is-user-allowed-to-view.php?website={identifier}

The identifier is a numeric value which refers to both a physical folder and a post in the database… and the script would then return true or false.

Or is there perhaps another way of solving the same issue?

Cheers!

Answer 1

You can use mod_rewrite to rewrite requests with such a URL internally to your script:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^website/([0-9]+)$ is-user-allowed-to-view.php?website=$1

But this rule is only for the URL path /website/12345 and nothing else.