Session and Login

[Anon]

Please Help...

I a login page. It's just a simple HTML form.

<FORM ACTION ="login.php" METHOD ="post">
<INPUT TYPE="text" SIZE="15" NAME="login">
<INPUT TYPE="password" SIZE="15" NAME="password">
<INPUT TYPE="submit" VALUE="Login">
</FORM>

After the users login (submit the form), the "login.php" will check the login and password against the database. If everything is correct, "login.php" will send them to the next page called "main.html". "main.html" is a main of 2 different frames (message.php) and (read.php). I got everything to work up to this point.

What I want is that after the user(s) login, I need some kind of machanism to keep the login name and check every time they access "message.php" or "read.php".

You might asked, why do I have to check their login names again after they login?
Well, different login name will read different messages. They do not read the same messages.

Well, I know I probably need to use session of some kind because I want to keep track of all the people are using (browsing "main.html"), and as soon as they leave "main.html", I have to know that too...

Sorry, for the long message, but I want to be specific, so we do not have any communication problem.

Thanks for all your help,

Chris

[Anon]

Well, you definitely want to use sessions.
The way I currently do it...

Once I have authenticated the user,
I register a session variable called user and another called auth.

session_start(); //creates session, or opens
//existing session
$user = "user"
$auth = 1;

Each time a page is loaded i do

session_start();
if(!$auth){
echo"You are not authorized";
exit;
}...continue page

anywhere in the page, I can access the $user variable. (anywhere after the call to session_start)

I dont know how you should go about keeping track of all the users on the site.
I would probly generate a file, and stick in the username of everyone who logs on... and when the log out, I find and delete their username from the file...

Hope I could help

andre @ performance technologies

[trooper]

Chris you are right in wanting to use sessions for this type of work

Your best bet is to look at the manual for sessions.

As for being notified when someone is reading main.html

In conjunction with what andre said why no t do this

have a tiny piece of script at the top of each page. This script should check that 1) the user is logged in (by there session data).

Then get the script to write to a table the page name and the user who has visited the page.

By putting it in a db table you can do lots more analysis than with a flat file.

remember to successfully delete a session you need to 'unset' it first rather than just destroying it

HTH

Gary Mailer

[Anon]

Also, if you aren't using PHP4 (which has built in session functions).

I found a library that I have been using for over a year, which handles sessions just fine. I got it online, and is free to use.
I completely imitates php4 session handling.

But if you are just beginning, you probly do have PHP4.

g'luck

andre @ performance technologies