Confirm File was downloaded and by whom?

[newportri]

Greetings

I use cffile for an administrator to upload documents (PDF) to a repository directory. The name of the file is captured to the DB when uploaded.

I need to confirm if/when an end user has downloaded the document, and any information I can capture (IP address, etc.?) using a yes/no flag field and a field to store IP address? The user's info is already a record in the DB, and their session variable is available at log-in.

Thanks in advance

newportri

[Dan_Bracuk]

What's the part you are having difficulty with?

[newportri]

Dan:

Thanks for your continued help!

I don't know how I would go about confirming that the user actually surfaced the PDF to read it or print it. They could log into the system but not necessarily download documents- I need to have a record that confirms which documents they actually accessed.

Thanks again-


newportri

[Dan_Bracuk]

You have to know how your site works. Specifically, you have to know the available methods of downloading documents.

[newportri]

Dan:

The administrator uploads all the documents to a repository. The name of the document (whatever.pdf) is sent to the DB in a field named "FileContents" along with all the information about it, creating a record.

Later, a user logs on and can now see a link to the document - something like

<cfquery name="surface" datasource="#Request.BaseDSN#">
SELECT new_bid_ID, FileContents
FROM Bid
WHERE new_bid_ID = 388
</cfquery>

<cfoutput query="surface"><a href="bids/documents/#FileContents#" target="_blank">Click Here to see this document</a></cfoutput>

Is there any way to confirm that a logged-in user hit the link?

Thanks again

newortri

[Dan_Bracuk]

The answer is in the anchor tag. Instead of going straight to the document, go to a cf page that allows you to collect your data before showing the pdf to the user.

[newportri]

Dan:

Sorry to ask an assuredly simple question, but would the page simply carry out some processing then cflocation or would the user need to take additional action?

There is a session variable "Session.user_id" floating around- So it would need to be an update action- updating a yes/no field like:

UPDATE ****
SET didthedocgetopened = yes
WHERE Session.user_id = #Session.user_id#

?

Thanks......

[Dan_Bracuk]

quote:

---

Originally posted by: newportri
Dan:

Sorry to ask an assuredly simple question, but would the page simply carry out some processing then cflocation or would the user need to take additional action?

There is a session variable "Session.user_id" floating around- So it would need to be an update action- updating a yes/no field like:

UPDATE ****
SET didthedocgetopened = yes
WHERE Session.user_id = #Session.user_id#

?

Thanks......

---

Ian answered the first part.

For logging, I would be adding records, not updating them. That enables you to not only see who accessed the file, but how often.

[Newsgroup_User]

newportri wrote:
> Dan:
>
> Sorry to ask an assuredly simple question, but would the page simply carry out
> some processing then cflocation or would the user need to take additional
> action?
>

It could, but the usual solution is to use the <cfcontent...> tag to
deliver the desired content, the PDF document in your example, after all
desired logging and other processing.

It also allows for the PDF documents to not be in a web accessible
directory so that intelligent users can not by pass your security and
logging to directly access the document with a browser.