The Apache mod_rewrite is often used to protect images and other types of media files from hotlinking from other sites, that make them appear in their pages although they are served from the original sites.
However, mod_rewrite can be used to protect the service of Flash files against hotlinking because these are embedded in pages using the <object> tag and in this case the browsers do not send a referer when requesting the Flash file from the origin server.
This class provides an alternative solution that works by generating a access key that is used to compose the URL used in the object tag but it is only valid only during a limited period of time.
The class takes as options the location of server directory where is the file to be protected, a password and the limit of time during which the access key is valid.
When the class validates the access key, it serves the real Flash file if the key is valid, or serves an error Flash file otherwise. |
