CODEWITHSUNDEEP
imageapache.htaccessmod-rewritehttp-redirect
user3851589
user3851589

Reputation: 85

Htaccess direct linking image to page

I'd like to prevent direct image viewing without the entire page.

If someone goes to
mysite.com/images/image1.jpg forward to mysite.com/image1.htm
mysite.com/images/image2.jpg forward to mysite.com/image1.htm
mysite.com/images/image3.jpg forward to mysite.com/image2.htm
mysite.com/images/image4.jpg forward to mysite.com/image2.htm

Is Htaccess the best way to do this and how would I set it up?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 256

Answers (2)

mxxk
mxxk

Reputation: 10254

Reading the comments, I'd recommend to avoid maintaining N RewriteRules for N images. Such a setup will turn into a maintenance nightmare for the site admin who will need to copy and paste a new rule for every new image on the site. And if you ever need to change the rules, well... good luck with that.

If you have the flexibility to choose a better directory structure, it can simplify your .htaccess file down to a single rewrite rule. In that case, you can choose a directory structure where given a path to an image you can easily determine the path to the page it belongs to. For example:

root/
  .htaccess
  page1/
    index.html
    image/
      image1.jpg
      image2.jpg
  page2/
    index.html
    image/
      img.jpg

Here the rewrite definition within root/.htaccess is simple (adapted from @jon-lin's answer):

# Rewrite any image URL `/<page>/images/*` to `/<page>/`.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^https?://mysite\.com/
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/image/ /$1/ [L,R]

Pros

  • One RewriteRule to rule them all.
  • Your images do not have to be .jpg, as long as they reside in /<page>/image/.

Cons

  • Need to reorganize existing files.
  • Directory structure very tailored to the rewriting problem. It would be awkward for a page to access an image which "belongs" to another page.

Upvotes: 0

Jon Lin
Jon Lin

Reputation: 143906

You can check for the "Referer" request header. Browsers sometimes use it to tell the server what URL told the browser to load the file. However, not all browsers will use the referer header and it can easily be forged, so this is not a sure way to prevent direct linking to your images.

You can add this at the top of your htaccesss file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^https?://mysite\.com/
RewriteRule ^images/(.+)\.jpg$ /$1.html [L,R]

Upvotes: 0

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