password script not working

[Anon]

I am new to PHP. I am creating a very simple passord authenitication for a page. I have an html form set up to open another page with PHP script giving two conditionals. One if the variable is true and one if not. I have the true value of the variable, $Login=blue, listed before the conditionals. Everytime, the page opens and authenticates the user. It doesn't seem to matter what the password is. Given this, is it obvious to someone what my error may be?

[jcornett]

The most common mistake is to use only one equals sign in the conditional statement. When using PHP, a single = means something different than a double equals sign ==.

For instance:

If ($Login = 'Blue') {
<code here>

}

In this case you are actually setting $Login to be blue then checking whether it returns true. This will ALWAYS result in a TRUE statement.

Change the above statement to read:

If ($Login == 'Blue') {
<CODE HERE>

}

Another coding trick is to switch the order of the variable and value being checked like this:

If ('Blue' = $Login) ...

With this statement (which is incorrect) you will receive an error statement instead of it ALWAYS resulting in a TRUE statement since you cannot assign $Login to 'Blue'.

Hope this helps!

John Cornett
Senior Development Engineer
Web Teks, Inc.
http://www.web-teks.com
[e-mail]

[Anon]

Thanks, John. That helped. It works now. The double equal sign was needed. I also needed to put that command within the conditional. I had it prior to the conditional before. I had it something like:
$login=blue
if ($login)...........

It needed to be:
if($login==blue).........

Thanks again,
Tamara