Who is client?

[balta]

We are developing an intranet site to manage Technology Requests. To make the process simpler for the users we are gathering all of the information we need about them from e-directory via-PHP LDAP functions. This is working great. However, we have to know get the user to provide their login id. What would be even better if we could somehow get the current user ID from the client as soon as they hit the main page and we would know everything about them as soon as the page loads. I can't seem to find a way to get this information from the client? Any Suggestions?

Thanks

[vaaaska]

Their login is likely stored in a cookie or a session.

Do a search in the Coding forum on authentication and you will find a billion threads - it's much discussed around here.

When you have some code post back here and folks will help you get through it.

[balta]

For some reason my boss does not want us to use a cookie to store and retrieve the username. I suggested this. His feeling is that the user has already logged in to the workstation. We should somehow be able to extract the username from the workstation ... pass the username to LDAP ... and have all of the information about the person we need without them ever hitting a single key.

[Rucia]

balta wrote:

For some reason my boss does not want us to use a cookie to store and retrieve the username.

Quite right too. A large percentage of people have cookies blocked, or at least on a level where you can either accept or decline the cookie.

A much more secure and functional approach is to utilse the PHP Session. It offers many advantages, such as residing only on the server and is therefore invisible to the user. You have more control over what the user can and cannot do (access rights & privilages), and there are many more.

The best thing to do is read this excellent tutorial on PHP sessions. This should give you the basics.
http://www.phpfreaks.com/tutorials/41/8.php

Hope this was of help

[balta]

I took at look at this tutorial and I am using Session variables for many thing throughout the site. However, I do not think I am explaining my problem clearly ...

Here is the senerio,

User comes in in the AM and Logs on to the Network at any machine on campus. They open IE and go to http://mysite. When the page loads It has available the Network Login ID of the person who logged in and displays a form prefilled with all of their information. Once I have their login ID I can store in in a session variable but I need to get it with out asking for it. I need to somehow get this information from teh client. I can get their IP address ($SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']) and the machine they are logged into ($SERVER['REMOTE_HOST']) but I cant find a way to get at the username. I tried $ENV['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] and $ENV['REMOTE_USER'] but both have no value. Do I need to do something in the configuration file to get these values? or is there something I need to do on the client machines themselves?

[wreed]

Found this on Expert-Exchange, not my code.

Question:

I was wondering if there is anyway to capture the NT user Login in PHP. The ASP code is Request.ServerVariables("logon_user"), does anyone know if PHP has somethign similar. I am running PHP, Apache and MySQL as my Intranet server and need to capture the login to provide indivual pupils timetables on login (I work for a school).

<?php
    /*
     Getting netbios info
     CopyLeft 2002 (GNU GPL V2) by polo
    */     

error_reporting(E_ALL);

/* get the ip of the client */
if (isset($_SERVER["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"]))
 {
     $ip = $_SERVER["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"];
    } else {
     $ip = $_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"]; 
    }
    echo 'ip : '.$ip.'<br>';

/* send a "special" packet */
$fp = fsockopen('udp://'.$ip, 137);
fwrite($fp, "\x80b\0\0\0\1\0\0\0\0\0\0 CKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA\0\0!\0\1");

/* wait 2 secs, and get the data */
socket_set_timeout($fp, 2);
$data = fread($fp, 256);

/* get netbios records number */
$nbrec = ord($data[56]);

/* display nebios records : the username is a record of type 3 */
echo '<table border="1">';
echo '<tr><th>no</th><th>type</th><th>value</th></tr>';
for($i = 0; $i < $nbrec; $i++) {
 $offset = 18 * $i;
 printf ("<tr><td>%02d</td><td>%02X</td><td>%s</td></tr>",
     $i,
     ord($data[72 + $offset]),
     trim(substr($data, 57 + $offset, 15)));
}
echo '</table>';
?>

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Web/Web_Languages/PHP/Q_20562144.html

[Rucia]

Right, i see what you are asking. I don't know a way of directly interogating the windows system through PHP, but in VB it is very easy. My proposal is this: if you have a small VB app which runs automatically at login. When the app autoruns it gets the current login id of the user, it then outputs either a html or PHP page to your desired location (preferably a hidden folder). When your user opens up IE and goes to MySite simply get your PHP script which already pulls the IP to open and read in the login ID from the VB generated file.

You may well have access to VB6 or VB.net, so just in case (I know this is a PHP forum, but this may solve the overall problem.), here is the VB code for the app. Just compile it and add an entry into the autorun section of the registry.

Option Explicit

Private Declare Function GetUserName Lib "advapi32.dll" _
Alias "GetUserNameA" (ByVal lpBuffer As String, nSize As Long) As Long

Public Function CurrentUser() As String
'******************************************************
' Function to get the current logged on user in windows
'******************************************************

Dim strBuff As String * 255
Dim X As Long

CurrentUser = ""
X = GetUserName(strBuff, Len(strBuff) - 1)
If X > 0 Then
    'Look for Null Character, usually included
    X = InStr(strBuff, vbNullChar)
    'Trim off buffered spaces too
    If X > 0 Then
        CurrentUser = UCase(Left$(strBuff, X - 1)) 'UCase is optional 
    Else
        CurrentUser = UCase(Left$(strBuff, X))
    End If
End If

End Function

Public Function SaveTextToFile(ByVal strData As String,
ByVal FullPath As String,
Optional ByVal ErrInfo As String = "") As Boolean

  Dim Contents As String
  Dim bAns As Boolean = False
  Dim objReader As StreamWriter
  Try

      objReader = New StreamWriter(FullPath)
      objReader.Write(strData)
      objReader.Close()
      bAns = True
  Catch Ex As Exception
      ErrInfo = Ex.Message

  End Try
  Return bAns

End Function

Private Sub Form_Load()
Dim fs As FileStream = New FileStream("C:\YourHiddenFolder\CurUsr.txt", _
FileMode.OpenOrCreate, FileAccess.ReadWrite)

strData=CurrentUser
SaveTextToFile(strData, fs)
Application.Exit()
End Sub

If you prefer to use only PHP, it may help to post the code which is not working for example you said you tried $_ENV['REMOTE_USER'].