User Authentication with PHP

zpyoung

I'm currently working to build a new site with user authentication. I have done a little research and have a few questions. I have built a site with user authentication before but thought I would do it different. I would like to get some pros and cons of the below methods.

Build php file to authenticate against a .htaccess file using HTTP Authentication.
Build php file to authenticate against MySQL file using HTTP Authentication.
Build php file to authenticate against MySQL file using html form.
Build php file to authenticate against LDAP file using html form.
Edit/Delete Message

anm

Actually, write now I'm writing a PHP class for user authentication. What I'm doing is using PEAR:😃B for database queries (right now I use SQLite, but if I want to do MySQL it's just a couple of lines changed as opposed to all the queries).

I will be doing it as authentication against the DB through forms, using sessions to maintain the user across pages. I would definitely recommend writing a class to handle user authentication, or getting one someone else wrote (I'll be putting mine online once I'm done). It will make your actually coding 100% simpler and easier to understand. And if you are doing databases, use PEAR:😃B for greater transportability.

zpyoung

What is pear? Never heard of it.

anm

http://pear.php.net

AMAZING resources in PEAR -- for more general tutorials look at http://www.phpkitchen.com/staticpages/index.php?page=2003041204203962
that page.

PEAR:😃B allows you to create scripts that work with mySQL, pgsql, SQLite, ORacle, msaccess, mssql, and tons of other database programs without changing the entire program, just a line of code at the top,