Allow users to download files outside webroot

[SaFF]

Hello I am using PHP to allow users to upload files and I have them sitting in a folder outside webroot (/var/www) folder for security reasons. It is in the folder /var/uploads. A user uploads files for specific records. Once the the uploaded files are moved to the uploads folder, the address of the attachment is stored in the database. Now whenever a user checks the record, attachments for the specific record are going to be displayed for downloads.Since they are out of the webroot, I am unable to get them downloaded as they would have a url of \[quote\] http://localhost/var/uploads/attachment.txt\[/quote\]Do we have a solution or should it downloadable folders be child directories of the webroot?\[code\]<?php$con = mysql_connect("localhost","id","pass");if (!$con) { die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error()); }mysql_select_db("db", $con);$result = mysql_query("select * from attachments");while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)){echo '<a href="'.$row[2].'" target="_blank">Download</a>--'.$row[3].'<br>';}mysql_close($con);?> \[/code\]is the code I am using. The folder's owner is www-data:/ or the web server. So there should be no access issues.