Secure connection

[mbw]

Hi!
When I connect to mysql through php, I use something like this:

mysql_connect ("mysql.mypage.com","my_username","password") or die("" . mysql_error());
mysql_select_db("database");

How can I hide the password from the source file? Shall I store the password in a folder where no one except from me has permission to read the file?

Something like:

include("safe/password.php");

mysql_connect ("mysql.mypage.com","my_username","$password_variable") or die("" . mysql_error());
mysql_select_db("database");

?

[matchew]

the only way someone is going to get your password is if you get a connection error and the error was with the password.

php is serverside so this is the only way that would get passed to the browser.
including a file is no different than copying and pasting it into the script

[MarkR]

You will have to have the password somewhere that the script can read. Nobody can see the PHP source code unless they have shell (or local) access to the server and permissions to read the file containing it.

Of course if you're on a shared server there's the problem of malicious scripts written by other people to contend with. These would be able to read the file as they'll probably be running under the same user. There's no easy way out of this, although having the provider set base_opendir and enable safe mode may help a little.

On a dedicated server it's less of a problem.

As for error messages, you must do the following:

1. Ensure that if a database connection error occurs, the error message doesn't contain the password. Test this by shutting down MySQL and see what error is shown - if it includes the password, change the code until it doesn't.
2. Ensure that in your production environment, detailed error messages are never shown to the users. This is general good practice.

Mark

[mbw]

..for clearing up how this stuff works 🙂