Re: Php coding help - Newbie question

On 1/17/07, Jochem Maas <jochem@iamjochem.com> wrote:

Ramdas wrote: Hi Group, A very newbie question. Might be discussed earlier, please forgive. Are so much of a noob that STFW is not within your capabilities? (just thought I'd ask, given that you admit to realising the info *might* be out there already) I am having a site in PHP ( not very great design ) which I need to convert/modify to use functions. Such the code for connecting / binding to Ldap is not repeated & scripts are more readable. The site deals with modifying / adding / deleting entries in a LDAP dir. In each of the pages following is done: <?php require 'validate.php' ;// validate.php checks if the user is loged in $connect = ldap_connect(ldapserver); if ($connect) { bind ... do the things.... }else { echo erro..} ?> Also please advice what is a correct method of checking the user's session. Currenlty I use a "HTTP_SESSION_VARS" variable to store the recommended to use the $_SESSION superglobal instead and stuff values directly into (after having called session_start()) instead of using session_register() et al. user's login & passwd . Each time the user hits the page these vars you only need to store *whether* they are logged in - and set that value when you actually handle a login attempt (obviously storing their username could be handy) I don't see any reason to store the passwd and validate against ldap on every request ... in fact I believe that storing the pwd in such a way is essentially less secure. are checked with the existing values in the LDAP (this is done by validate.php). Please suggest me some good starting point where I can start a fresh with more compact/cleaner Code. that question is about as vague as 'how long is a chinaman?' (the answer to that question being 'yes he is') here are some very vague ideas/functions: an include file ... =========== 8< ===================== <?php function sessionCheck() {

       if (!isset($_SESSION['loggedin']) || !$_SESSION['loggedin']) {
               /* show login page then .. */
               exit;
       }

} function doLogin($username, $passwd) {

       $_SESSION['loggedin'] = false;
       if (/* given $username+$passwd check outs in ldap*/)
               $_SESSION['loggedin'] = true;

       return $_SESSION['loggedin'];

} ?> an 'init' include file =========== 8< ===================== <?php require 'your-include-file.php'; // see above session_start(); if (isset($_POST['uname'], $_POST['pwd'])) {

       doLogin($_POST['uname'], $_POST['pwd']);

} sessionCheck(); ?> any other file (other than the login 'page') =========== 8< ===================== <?php require 'your-init-file.php'; // we are logged in - it's magic // do some shit // the end, congrats go get laid :-) ?>

Thanx for the all responses. Regards Ram