16th August 2010 - 4 minutes read time
Drupal has two ways in which to allow users to download files, these are private and public.
With public the files are open for anyone to download and Drupal is not involved in the download process. This means that no statistics are recorded or permissions used when downloading the file. Each file is referenced by name.
Private file access means that Drupal is run every time a file is downloaded. This allows the download to be recorded and a permissions check run to make sure that the user in question is allowed to access the file. Each file is referenced by a path that can be completely different from the original filename.
