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I'm using Restlet as backend trying to create a small web app.

I am allowing users to upload their profile images, but not sure where to store them. Google tells me to store it in the file system which makes sense.

So should I store them in a public web folder in which the web front end lives? But wouldn't that allow people to access all the profile images very easily?

If i don't store the images in the public web directory, where should I store them and how do I protect them?

My server is Ubuntu server 12.04 thanks in advance

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  • Nothing personal and no offense intended but this question is analogous to "What kind of sandwich should I have and should I put mustard or ketchup on it?". It's entireley subjective and is dependent on your storage and security needs and desires and that's not something we can answer for you.
    – joeqwerty
    Mar 28, 2013 at 15:18

2 Answers 2

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You could certainly store them in a sub-folder within the public folder, and disable folder browsing. Then only expose the images within your application.

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You can store the files outside of the document root, and include them on the backend with a relative path. Typically, web server will deny access to the parent directory of docroot, but the backend services will be able to access them.

i.e if you use:

DocRoot = /var/www
Images = /var/profile-pics

This will not work:

http://www.yourdomain.com/../profile-pics/David.JPG

This will work:

<?php include('../profile-pics/David.JPG'); ?>

Note: PHP used as example, and of course you cannot include a jpeg in this manner. Used only as example of keeping sensitive files out of the document root.

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  • You can do this, but it exacts a severe performance penalty for calling PHP just to load a static resource. Mar 28, 2013 at 17:05
  • You are definitely correct. I just wanted to provide the example, as some users would never know otherwise. This method is best used for including other scripts that would need to be parsed regardless. Mar 28, 2013 at 17:12

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