How to go about protecting files from unauthorized downloads

Question

I am creating a membership site using PHP and a MySQL database, I have the means for users to log in using their username and password. All pretty standard stuff.

I

Answer 1

You can protect your video folder with an .htaccess file and 'route' all the requests through a php script:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) index.php?file_id=$1 [L]

And do the authentication in the index.php

session_start();
// get filename from database or somewhere else
$filename = getFilename($_GET["file_id"]);

if ($_SESSION["is_logged_in"]) {
    readfile($filename);
}