Re: best user authentication method?

IIS I'm not familiar with, and Apache has a native scheme involving .htaccess. If you want a portable authentication method, I'd recommend authenticating against a list of users/passwords contained in a database. Using MySQL, PostgreSQL or Interbase would keep your database platform neutral, and low cost. Here's code picked up from a Rasmus Lerdorf article which authenticates against a MySQL database, there are variations on this everywhere. I put this in a file called auth.inc, and then the top of every page which requires authentication simply includes "auth.inc". ------------cut------------

<?       require( "dbname.inc" );
    function authenticate() {
        Header("WWW-authenticate: basic realm=\"Auction Maintenance\"");
        Header("HTTP/1.0 401 Unauthorized");
        $title="Invalid Login";
        include( 'header.inc' ); ?>
        In order to proceed you will need a valid username/password.
        <?include ("footer.inc");
        exit;
    }

    if(!isset($PHP_AUTH_USER)) {
        authenticate();
    } else {
        mysql_pconnect("localhost","root")
            or die("Unable to connect to SQL server");
        mysql_select_db( "$auction" ) or die("Unable to select database");
        $login_id=strtolower($PHP_AUTH_USER);
        $query = mysql_query("select * from admin where cAdminId='$login_id'".
                             " and cPassword='$PHP_AUTH_PW'");
        if(!mysql_num_rows($query))
           {
           authenticate();
           }
        else
           {
           include( 'header.inc' );
           }
    }

?> ---------------------- cut --------------------------- Hope this is useful. If you use PostgreSQL the calls will be different, and it may be best to use ODBC, then you will truly have portability. Regards - Miles Thompson At 11:27 PM 01/16/2001 -0500, Romulo Roberto Pereira wrote:

hello! What is the best user authentication methd for linux (apache)? and for windows (IIS)?