Question

I’ve searched on this and I’m still not sure. In asp.net, I can programmatically login a user on the server side…and I’m not talking about a client-side script that fills in the forms automatically when they pull up the site. I can check something server-side and, if true, log them into the site. If false I can redirect to a user name/password form and make them type in the user name and password.

Is it possible to do something similar in PHP?

I have something I would like to do, but it sure would be nice not to waste time on something if it isn’t even possible to begin with

Thanks!

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In asp.net the process works like this:

1. call uservalidate method to see if the credentials are correct
2. call formsauthentication.setauthcookie to set the authentication cookie
3. redirect user to predetermined page

e.g.,

    Response.Cookies.Remove(FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName);
    FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie("username", false);
    Response.Redirect("samepage.aspx");

Only on the redirect does the ticket get processed.

Answer 1

Sure it can – you need to read up on PHP Sessions.

1. You accept the user’s credentials via a standard POST request sent from a form.

2. Take the credentials and check if they match (usually by querying a DB).

3. If they do, set a session variable to indicate the user has authenticated ($_SESSION['user_is_authenticated'] = true);

4. Check in your subsequent pages that needs to be secured if the user is authenticated or not – if he’s not, redirect to login page: if (!$_SESSION['user_is_authenticated']) header('location:login.php');