Hi, I am using a csv file to authenticate user login. Is it possible to password protect the CSV file? I do not want anybody to be able to download the csv file through url. I googled and I found out that it is not possible to password protect a csv file. Is there any other way I can password protect the file?
+1
A:
Compress it in a ZIP file using encryption. You'll have to decompress/unencrypt it each time you want to read from it, however.
See Powerarchiver, winrar, or other compression utilities for more information.
JYelton
2010-09-17 20:45:28
could you please show me how will I encrypt/unencrypt using code in php?
developer
2010-09-17 20:48:19
Instead of zipping it I’d just encrypt it. Checking the php doc the mcrypt_encrypt function would be one. http://de2.php.net/manual/en/function.mcrypt-encrypt.php (which probably requires mcrypt as a dependency)
Kissaki
2010-09-17 20:53:12
just make sure you can't download it. that makes much more sense than encrypting it and leave it in public place
Thomas Weber
2010-09-17 20:55:59
@developer: Kissaki is right, simply encrypting it will be likely better. Moreover, according to http://php.net/manual/en/book.zip.php, there doesn't seem to be an encrypt/decrypt built into the PHP zip library.
JYelton
2010-09-17 22:32:30
+8
A:
the short answer is no: CSV is a plain text format, it's not Excel.
the long answer is: you should never put security relevant information into a folder which is accessible via the webserver. move the file into a folder you can access from PHP but which is outside of your document root in Apache
Thomas Weber
2010-09-17 20:46:26
A:
If you're worried about someone downloading the file, put it someplace that isn't downloadable. Your webserver will only return files from a specific set of directories. If your CSV file is not in one of them, nobody will be able to download it.
Jeff Dege
2010-09-17 20:48:05
+1
A:
If using Apache, use a .htaccess file to deny access to that file. Better still, store the file somewhere above the webroot. For example, if your webserver is located at /home/username/htdocs/, you could store the file at /home/username/data/logins.csv.
michaelc
2010-09-17 20:49:10