storing images outside of public_html

[eluser]Jelmer[/eluser]
Use PHP's readfile() function: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.readfile.php

And don't forget to output the correct MIME type before you use the readfile function.

For example like this:

Code:

// for security reasons, don't allow "../" in the request URI
$server_request = str_replace('../', '', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
// Rewrite the request to the path on your server
$file = '../outside_webroot/'.$server_request;
// Get the requested path and explode it by the dots
$file_ext = explode('.', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
// The last value in the array will be the file extention, pop it off
$file_ext = array_pop($file_ext);
// Use the file extention in the MIME type so you don't have to write
// a switch or if/else for every image type (jpg, gif, png)
header('Content-Type: image/'.$file_ext);
readfile($file);