[pLog-svn] resserver usage

[Reto Hugi]

> On 9/28/06, Jon Daley <plogworld at jon.limedaley.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, 28 Sep 2006, Oscar Renalias wrote:
>> > When I said hidden resources, I meant hidden albums. There is a checkbox when
>> > creating an album that makes it not appear in the list of albums in the
>> > public side of the blog. I don't see how this could be possible, although I
>> > am not sure how many people are really using this feature.
>>         But, I still don't get it - they can still be hidden - URLs aren't
>> ever revealed.
>>

To sum it up, I see three situations where the url to a resource should
not be directly linked:

- having some sort of access control to resources
- doing statistics through lifetye (not webserver access log)
- having nice urls for resources (?)

the first reason leaves not much space for alternatives, I think. PHP
has to read the file and send it to the client.

But the other two may be done in a less resource intensive manner:

- using mod_rewrite (i like the plugin variant proposed by paul)
- redirecting the client through the script (not the script reading the
resource)

I don't have a PoC for the last suggestion, but I assume, that we may
safe reasonable amounts of server resources by only asking the database
for the correct direct url to the file and do a 301 or 302 redirect.
downside is, that this needs changes to the core, IMO.

Challanges:
- can we improve performance and still have access control via lifetype
(-> thinking about the new permission capabilities...)
- is redirecting a useful solution to improve performance?

oh well, not a very helpful post, just my thoughts :)

reto