login header. am i doing it right?

limiPHP

hello all,

Before i dive into making a website with log-in option just wanted to make sure that i'm going the right way...

my website has 5 pages.

each page has header on top with the log-in text fields (i'm thinking of using dreamweaver templates)

now i'm thinking, each time the user logs in the header will look different (it'll have text saying: "welcome $username" instead of login text boxes).

It means that I'll need to create 2 pages for each of my main 5 pages. one for logged in and one for logged out.

Is it the ideal way to do it? I have a feeling that it is not. How do coders tackle this when part of the page looks different when user logs in (please don't tell me framesets. I tried it, and it sucks...)

thanks in advance.

kburger

I agree about the framesets. Don't go that route. Use sessions and do something like this in your header:

if (isset($_SESSION['username']) {
	// do your Welcome $_SESSION['username'] stuff
} else {
	// do your login form
}

While we're at it, in your login handler script you might want log them in successfully, set the $_SESSION['username'] variable, and then redirect them to the page they were on:

header("Location: $HTTP_SERVER_VARS['HTTP_REFERER']");

limiPHP

Thank you so much kburger! that was exactly what I was trying to figure out before i saw your post.
but now when i use your referrer code it brings up this error:

Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_ENCAPSED_AND_WHITESPACE, expecting T_STRING or T_VARIABLE or T_NUM_STRING in...

i'm trying to google this but can't figure out what's happening. It's all inside a function so I added :
global $HTTP_REFERER;

BTW that's how this part of my code looks like:

function compare($userName, $password){
		global $mySql;
		global $HTTP_REFERER;

	$strNmCmpr = "SELECT password FROM mobile_users WHERE userName ='" . $userName . "'";
	$rstGetNameCompare = sqlQuery($strNmCmpr, $mySql);
	$getThePswd = $rstGetNameCompare[0]["password"];
	if ($getThePswd == $password){
		#redirect code
		$_SESSION['userName'] = $_POST['userName'];
		$_SESSION['password'] = $_POST['pswd'];
		header("Location:_$HTTP_SERVER_VARS['HTTP_REFERER']");
		#header("Location: header_in.php");
	}else{
		echo "<font color='red'>Heya! Wrong username or password</font>";	
	}
}

Thanks for helping🙂

kburger

Looks like you've got an underscore "_" between Location and $HTTP_SERVER_VARS.

You might also need to do something like:

$page = $HTTP_SERVER_VARS['HTTP_REFERER'];
header("Location: $page");

Also, note that $HTTP_SERVER_VARS is an apache-specific global variable. You might try $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']

limiPHP

YOOHOO! it works.

well, just for other peeps to know, yeah even without that underscore after "Location:" (god knows how it got there) it gave me the same error, but this corrected it:

header("Location:".$HTTP_SERVER_VARS['HTTP_REFERER']);

I just needed to add this dot thing before the HTTP var (who invented this language? what were they thinking about using a dot in coding lingo. It's so easy to miss).

...but then Safari was "bitching" and didn't wanna open the page, saying that it brings up "null" or something, but of course kburger is there for the rescue! so forget about apache-specific variables, changing it to $_SERVER did the magic!

(hoping that it'll work in all other browsers as well. I'm scared to check... ;-)

This is so new to me.
Thanks a million. 😃