Currently I have a client application which downloads files directly from my WEB server which is running on a LAMP server. File adresses are like this: http://example.com/application/images/*.jpg.
I'm going to count number of times file downloaded; However I cannot change client applications so they can send their request to other addresses or page.
I guess there are some techniques based on URL-rewriting so that I can convert request in form like http://example.com/application/images/xyz.jpg to something like http://example.com/application/counter.php?file=xyz.jpg. This way I can handle file downloads and count them using techniques suggested in this answer.
So I want to know how should I setup .htaccess file or use mod-rewrtie to redirect my requests to counter.php page?
My current .htaccess file looks like this:
php_flag display_startup_errors on
php_flag display_errors on
php_flag html_errors on
php_flag log_errors on
# AddHandler application/x-httpd-php54 .php .php5 .php4 .php3
Options -Indexes
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
P.S. My web server is running on a shared host so I don't have access to everything on this server but I can do task like adding/editing .htaccess files.
You can use these rule in your site root .htaccess:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(application)/images/(xyz\.jpg)$ $1/counter.php?file=$2 [QSA,L,NE]
Then inside counter.php keep a count and then load jpg image using $_GET['file'] with correct MIME-TYPE.