Password protect records

[TCovert]

How would I go about password protecting a single record in my database?

Any suggestions would be great. Thanks.

[swene]

it's not possible.. but you could instead encrypt the strings/blobs contained in the record by using simple string password encryption

[TCovert]

how would that work? What exactly does that do?

[swene]

design a little script with a simple encryption script snippet (you can find one at http://php.resourceindex.com or someplace) and use the same query to insert or update the record with the specific fields which you have encrypted (obviously, if you are using an ID field, you won't want to encrypt it).

[TCovert]

There has to be a way that you can password protect individual records....

[swene]

it's not possible. the only way is for you to encrypt the data contained inside the record so it is rendered unreadable, but is decryptable. No database platform has a feature for such an operation.

[TCovert]

I am sure it can be accomplished using PHP and a database. I am just looking for some suggestions on how to go about it.

Apparently you don't know how to do it. Thank you for your suggestions, though.

[altexis]

if the database doesn't allow people to have access in it.. you could just use two fields: one for password and one for the text
if the user enters the correct password the server returns the text

if the users have access to your database then <swene> has already answered you
you will need to encrypt the text and save it to the database as binary.. or as text in a form like 83F39B14 which will be the hexadecimal representation of the encrypted data
look in www.php.net for the encryption functions and you could use base64_encode() to translate the binary data to the hexadecimal numbers