February 14th, 2009
Have you ever wanted to secure links on your website (for example hide the real source of a file)? Here is a quick and easy way to do this.
<?php # File created on 11th February 2009 by Mike Rogers (http://www.fullondesign.co.uk/).
## Start defining constants ##
define(RUN_ERRORS, TRUE); // Do you want the script to display errors? TRUE = yes you do.
define(redirect_or_echo, 'redirect'); // Do you want to redirect the user to another website, or just echo the other other webpages' content. 'rediect' will redirect, 'echo' will return the web pages constents. I recommend redirect.
## End defining constants ##
/* Start the link codes. The code is the ?code=123 part of the URL. The array should be fotmatted like:
$link['code'] = 'http://URL';
You may find it easier to do this with MySQL or including this as a seperate file. Too many links could lower performance, but for a small website just trying to cloak a few links this is good 
*/
$link['1'] = 'http://www.site.com/';
// Start the system.
function external_url($url){
if($return = @file_get_contents($url)){
return $return;
}elseif(function_exists("curl_init")){
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 10);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$return = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
return $return;
}elseif($return = @implode("", @file($url))){
return $return;
} else {
return NULL;
}
}
// Checks if the code is a number
if(is_numeric($_GET['code']) && is_array($link)){
if(isset($link[$_GET['code']])){
if(redirect_or_echo === 'redirect'){
header('location: '.$link[$_GET['code']]);
} elseif(redirect_or_echo === 'echo'){
echo external_url($link[$_GET['code']]);
}else{
if(RUN_ERRORS === TRUE){
echo 'Sorry, an internal error has occoured.';
}
}
} else {
if(RUN_ERRORS === TRUE){
echo 'Sorry, the code you have provided is incorrect.';
}
}
}else{
if(RUN_ERRORS === TRUE){
echo 'Sorry, the code you have provided is incorrect.';
}
}
/*
You are free to share, modify and use this code for commercial uses. Please give a link back (to http://www.fullondesign.co.uk/ ) if you can, but you don't have you.
You use this at your own risk.
*/
?>
Download the Code
Useful Links
PHP’s Offical Website – It has a fantastic documentation section. Well worth a look.
PHP 6 and MySQL 5 for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide
– The book I learnt PHP from, it’s really good for beginners and reference guide.
