username constant ?

[basher]

I have a login page default.htm with a form that includes:

input box name=form_user_id
input box name=form_password

This forms action=login.php which authenticates the user_id to a MySQL database table:

user_id
password
firstname
lastname

I would like to use the firstname throughout the application. How do I make this available at all times??

Thank you,
Bill

[Anon]

Hi Bill,
You can use a cookie to save the variable "firstname" and then call the variable in your php scripts.

You can check out the sample code at http://www.thickbook.com/srccode/index.phtml?b=pe&ch=pe6

Hope this helps.

Laura Brandt

Aletia Hosting - Full-Featured, Superfast Web Hosting
$9.95/mo: 200MB + 10GB, Cpanel, PHP4/MySQL, Multi-Domains
Email [e-mail] - AIM: AletiaSales - ICQ: 111160011

[Anon]

Yep, cookies'll do it but if you want to be certain (user might have disabled them) use sessions.
There are good yutorials on this site and www.devshed.com

Nick

[basher]

I already have a cookie for the 'user_id', but how would i use that the 'user_id' to pull up the 'name' from the database. Instead of displaying the user_id, which would be like jsmith, I'd like to display the 'name' which would be John Smith. I think I would have to run a query on that. Any Ideas ?

Thanks

[laurabrandt]

Hi,

As Nick said, session is a more "sure" way to save variables.

Back to your question, you can actually create more than one cookie, one cookie to save the user_id, one cookie to save firstname. Then when you need it, you just all firstname from the script.

Using session, you can use session_register() to register more than one variable

More info about session:http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.session.php.

Another way I can think of is to actually use database to store all your data, including user_id and firstname. When you have found out the user_id, you just use that as a parameter to check out the firstname in the database.

(I'm using mySQL, in this case, I will use
$firstname=mysql_query ("SELECT firstname FROM mytable where user_id=$user_id")😉

Hope this helps.

Laura Brandt

Aletia Hosting - Full-Featured, Superfast Web Hosting
PHP, MySQL, Perl, Multiple domain support and more.
200MB + 10GB Transfer at $9.95/mth
http://AletiaHosting.com - AIM: AletiaSales

[Anon]

Sessions use cookies, so if they've disabled cookies, they've disabled sessions. 🙂

[knickerlas]

Sessions use cookies IF they are enabled and store data on the host machine if they are disabled. I'ts why most ecommerce sites use them to ensure you can fill your cart up.

Nick