NEED HELP ON PASSWORD PROTECTED PAGES.

Anon

I am new to PHP and am learning as I go but i really appreciate some help.

I am trying to have two users, "important" and "special" login on a single page (control_panel.phtml - see below). Based on their login which is variefied on main.phtml, they are either kept on main.phtml or sent to another page, important.phtml. The user "important" works fine and gets directed to important.phtml. However, the user special, keeps going back to the control_panel.phtml page. Any and all assistance would be wonderful. I have a form page with the following code:

//--- control_panel.phtml --------->

<HEAD>
<TITLE>Admin tools for Lipper Web Hosting</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000">

Here is the code for main.phtml


<?PHP

//------- File Name: main.phtml ------>
if ($who=="important" && $passwd=="very") {
        Header("Location:/important.phtml");
        exit();
}

if ($who=="special" && $passwd=="money") {
        Header("Location:/special.phtml");
        exit();
}

if ( ($who!="important" || $passwd!="very") || ($who!="special" || $passwd!=money
s") ) {
        Header("Location:/control_panel.phtml");
        exit();
}




<BODY>
LOTS OF STUFF THAT THE SPECIAL WOULD BE ABLE TO SEE
</BODY>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



As I said, above, my problem is that user and password work for important but I can't get the user and password to work for special.  It just keeps going back to control_panel.phtml

Thanks in advance, 

Heather

Anon

what password are you useing for special?
your second if statment checks for "money" but the third is checking for "moneys"
if your password choice is supposed to be "moneys" it will never return true and send the header for special
hope this helps

warren

Anon

Sorry, that was typo,

It is money on both.

Heather

Anon

Trouble-shooting tips:

echo all variables passed by the form
echo a statement within each if (for example in first if now)

comment out the headers for now

see if you can get the second if to execute by forcing the variables to equal the values for the second if within your php script (not passed by the form)

Anon

Hi Heather,

You have missed the leading quotes from the password in your final if statement - but I assume this is just a typo. More importantly your final 'if' statement will always return true because it contains all 'or's. You would get the same effect if it wasn't there at all.
When the computer comes to evaluate an 'if' statement that contains all 'or' conditions it runs through them one at a time until it finds one that is true and at that point the whole statement is true. Even if there were a hundred more it doesn't bother to go any further as there is no point. The statement is true if any one evaluates to true.
Conversely with 'and's they are evaluated one at a time until one is found to be false and then the whole statement is false. Again it doesn't bother to go any further as they all have to be true for the whole statement to be true. So if any one is found to be false....
Anyway, back to your 'if's. What you have said, in effect, is
if($who != "important" || $who != "special") - so if $who is "important" it is not equal to "special" (and visa - versa) and as this is what you are testing for in each case the statement is always true.
Try:
if ( ($who == "important" && $passwd != "very") || ($who == "special" && $passwd != "money") || ($who != "important" && $who != "special") )
Or just leave it out altogether!

Still doesn't explain why 'special' gets there in the first place. Perhaps you have done what we all do from time to time - made a typo in the actual code (which you haven't here) and have looked at it so many times you don't see it any more. Perhaps an identifier beginning with a capital letter in one area and not in another or a semi-colon after Location instead of a colon.... etc.