I'm not sure if this is the correct part of the forum to post on so feel free to move this if need be.. Onto the question..

My partner and I recently set up a portofilio website for our artwork and digital 3Dcontent. We want to set up a store so visitors to site can purchase or 3D digital content for use in their software. Upon completion of the purchase they will be directed to a page which will give them a download link so that they may download the item they have just purchased. I know that we could already use an established commerce system like OSCommerce etc for this.. but we want to do it so that you do not need to register an account but just rather browse the products and purchase without having to set up an account.

Now we have noticed some pitfalls in this system that, the page with the download link in could be passed on to other people who inturn could download the product without actually purchasing it, and the link to the file will be visible inside the source of the page. So we were thinking, would be possible to have the downloadable content in a database, and have the download link for the product call it from the database using say some form of php script similar to that which loads images into pages calling them from a database and inturn start the download without the actual direct for the file being visible... rather it being called via php which should actually call the file without displaying the exact url..

I know there are draw backs to this as it would still allow for the passing of the link to others unless there was some sort of system like a session time out added to the link, but I think that would still require some form of logging in procedure right?

I hope that made sense anyway, this is all very new to me...

What option do you think would be best .. Use an exsiting commerce system or create our own database?

From what you are describing, it seems like your requirements are pretty straightforward. I would suggest taking advantage of an open source/free package for this project. For a download manager, you can use one of the following:

FMDeluxe - The Official #1 File Management System!
Download Sentinel++
main | FD Script site

For your e-commerce end, you can try:

Associate-O-Matic :: Build a custom Amazon.com Associate Store with 1000's of items in minutes
VirtueMart: Your free e-commerce solution. - Welcome...

There are many more options out there. Check hotscripts.com if you haven't already. Good luck!

If you really want to do it yourself I would suggest this...

• Place all your "download after purchase" content into a secured folder (no one from the web can download the contents)
• Then prior to the purchase tag the customer with a session ID
• pass that session ID along to the merchant payment
• Inside your database you'll have a list of items that session ID is good for
• when the merchant bank says that the purchase is good you generate some links
• each link will be to a file like download.php?prod=101&sessionID=1234
• the download.php file will double check with the database that that session ID is good for that product
• when everything checks out the download.php file sends the proper header and amends the image.jpg file to it
• because the download.php file is not redirecting the user to the image but rather amending the file there won't be any difficulty in pulling the file from the secured directory
• I would however recommend that the users have a login because they may not be able to download the file successfully the first time

but like skyace888 & you said, their are open source packages that will do this for you.

enjoy the challenge
-Mike

And if you're worried about people passing the links along to others, you can add a date field to the table, something like "LinkExpireDateTime". When the user clicks on the link, before allowing download, the script could compare the system date to the "LinkExpireDateTime" value, and if the system date is earlier than the "LinkExpireDateTime", then you can allow the download. Otherwise, display a message that says the link is expired.