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philliptackett
Inspiring
November 17, 2009
Answered

read and display files as links from network location

  • November 17, 2009
  • 1 reply
  • 1610 views

Hello,

I've got a project where I'd like to look in a network directory and display whatever excel files in that directory as downloadable hyperlinks. Could anyone offer any assistance?

Thanks,

Phil

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer ilssac

There are two common approaches to that problem.

1) You can use the web server and|or the OS authentication and authorization mechinisms.  The would normally require to not allow 'anomyous' login, but use one of the authentication methods supported by your web server of choice.  Then the web server should be able to tell the OS who the user is and the OS can use that against the authoization data set on the files and or directories to see if that user is allows to access that file.

2) You can relocate the files to a directory that is outside the web root.  In this case you would not offer links directly to the files themselves.  Rather you would have links to a file delivery CFML code.  This code would see what file is desired from the data in the link.  It would fetch the file with <cffile...> functionality and the deliver the file with <cfcontent....> functionality.  This solution allows all the authentication and authoization logic to reside in the CFML code base rather then invoking other technologies.

1 reply

ilssac
ilssac
Inspiring
November 17, 2009

<cfdirectory...> to read the directory.

<cfoutput query="theDirectory"...>...</cfoutput> to output the results.

Inside the loop you would build HTML anchor <a ...> tags that link to the files found in that directory.  How you build those links would depend are whether they are web accessible (http://...) or UNC accessible (file://...).

NOTE: Some browsers block some uses of the 'file;' protocol for links under their security models.

Now, the real question you are probably asking, but didn't, is how to ready a network directory.  The default user that a ColdFusion service runs on under windows is the 'localSystem' account.  This user account normally has no permissions to any network location.  The solution is to either:

1) Give this user 'localSystem" account the desired network permissions (a generally bad idea),

2) Run the ColdFusion service as an existing domain user account that has the desired permissions to the network location (not a much better idea, but good for a brief 'proof of concept' test),

OR

3) Create a domain user account for the ColdFusion service, give this account the desired permissions and modify the ColdFusion service to run with this user (the generally best practice idea).

The same issues generally apply to Unix installations except there is no default 'localSystem' account.  When ColdFusion was installed, a user the ColdFusion dameon runs under was assigned by the installer.  Give that user the desired permissions or change it to another user with them.

P
philliptackettAuthor
Inspiring
November 17, 2009

Thanks for the quick response. That gives me a solid way to approach this. I'm not familiar w/

<cfdirectory> as I'm used to <cfquery>.  Just a quick follow up question. The site I'm creating will be in a secure app requiring a log in. After the user is authenticated they'll see the list of files in the directory as links. However, what's to prevent somebody from just entering the link w/out going through the log in? I guess what I'm asking is there a way to block access to the excel files from somebody who would know the URL and just type that in w/out going through the log in process?

Thanks again,
Phil

ilssac
ilssacCorrect answer
Inspiring
November 17, 2009

There are two common approaches to that problem.

1) You can use the web server and|or the OS authentication and authorization mechinisms.  The would normally require to not allow 'anomyous' login, but use one of the authentication methods supported by your web server of choice.  Then the web server should be able to tell the OS who the user is and the OS can use that against the authoization data set on the files and or directories to see if that user is allows to access that file.

2) You can relocate the files to a directory that is outside the web root.  In this case you would not offer links directly to the files themselves.  Rather you would have links to a file delivery CFML code.  This code would see what file is desired from the data in the link.  It would fetch the file with <cffile...> functionality and the deliver the file with <cfcontent....> functionality.  This solution allows all the authentication and authoization logic to reside in the CFML code base rather then invoking other technologies.

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