URL to access a private file within Drupal 7

Question

I want to be able to have my Drupal 7 site allow both public and private downloads (see below configuration screen shot).

It appears that the private directory at: sites/default/files/private is preventing direct access to the files which is what I want and is allowing direct public access to the files within: sites/default/files which is also what I want.

My question is what URL do I use to call the private files so that my function hook_file_download($url) it called and then can decide based on a combination of the directory within the /private directory and the requesting users role whether they have access to view this file?

Answer 1

The function you want to use is file_create_url().

You pass a stream wrapper path to your file, in this case it starts with 'private://'.

The value that you pass to the function is 'private://relative/path/to/file.txt'.

The relative path is based on the private files folder.

Answer 2

You can not downlaod the files directly via URL, when files is in private directory structure, This module will help you provide the permission to users to download the private files, hope this will help! https://drupal.org/project/private_files_download_permission