Question

Is there a numeric captcha available for PHP?

(which doesn’t rely on JavaScript being turned on)

---

EDIT:

• I know there are JS-independent
  captchas out there.
• I know there
  are PHP captchas out there.
• I know
  there are numeric captchas out there.

But I’m looking for a PHP numeric Javascript-independent captcha.
The only numeric captcha’s I’ve found are either for ASP.NET or jQuery/JS based ones.
I don’t want any of those as an answer to the question.

And I’m not taking about a small website here. In the answer I’d like to know whether your suggestion puts a lot of strain on the server or not.

Answer 1

I guess it can’t be avoided to deal with rendering an image when dealing with captchas?
Here’s a simple one (and may not be the most elegant):

session_start();

$strings = '123456789';
$i = 0;
$characters = 6;
$code = '';
while ($i < $characters)
{ 
    $code .= substr($strings, mt_rand(0, strlen($strings)-1), 1);
    $i++;
} 

$_SESSION['captcha'] = $code;

//generate image
$im = imagecreatetruecolor(124, 40);
$foreground = imagecolorallocate($im, 0, 0, 0);
$shadow = imagecolorallocate($im, 173, 172, 168);
$background = imagecolorallocate($im, 255, 255, 255);

imagefilledrectangle($im, 0, 0, 200, 200, $background);

// use your own font!
$font = 'monofont.ttf';

//draw text:
imagettftext($im, 35, 0, 9, 28, $shadow, $font, $code);
imagettftext($im, 35, 0, 2, 32, $foreground, $font, $code);     

// prevent client side  caching
header("Expires: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 00:00:00 GMT");
header("Last-Modified: " . gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s") . " GMT");
header("Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate");
header("Cache-Control: post-check=0, pre-check=0", false);
header("Pragma: no-cache");

//send image to browser
header ("Content-type: image/png");
imagepng($im);
imagedestroy($im);

Display it in a form:

<img src="captcha.php">
Enter the code above: <input type="text" name="captcha">

Once submitted, check the entered code:

if ($_POST['captcha'] == $_SESSION['captcha'])
    // do your thing