if statememt help

calvin_leonhart

On my site I wrote a code to let administrators view private messages. Here is the code:

                //if (!empty($_COOKIE['admin'])) {
                if ($isprivate != "1") {
                	$message = nl2br($message);
                	echo "$message";
                } else {
                	echo "<i>This message has been marked private. You must log in as an administrator to view it.</i>";
                }

I would like it to display the message if they are logged in, or if they are not, display the other message. I've been trying for about an hour, and I can't seem to get it to work.

Thanks.

-CALV1N

halojoy

can you find the place where $isprivate get its value

also you could test what value it has,
by using [man]var_dump[/man] in this temporary checking:

                //if (!empty($_COOKIE['admin'])) {

            echo '<pre'>; //needed in Windows
            var_dump( $isprivate ); // get full information of variable values
            echo '</pre>'; //needed in Windows

            if ($isprivate != "1") {
            	$message = nl2br($message);
            	echo "$message";
            } else {
            	echo "<i>This message has been marked private. 
                You must log in as an administrator to view it.</i>";
            }

calvin_leonhart

string(1) "1"

1=privatemsg
0=public msg

halojoy

then $isprivate works alright!

When $isprivate is = "1"
I suppose you get this displayed:
This message has been marked private. You must log in as an administrator to view it.

But test a var_dump on what you have in '$message'
maybe this variable is empty, and so you get no display

//
                echo '<pre'>; //needed in Windows
                var_dump( $message ); // get full info of variable
                echo '</pre>'; //needed in Windows

            if ($isprivate != "1") {
                $message = nl2br($message);
                echo "$message";
            } else {
                echo "<i>This message has been marked private.
                You must log in as an administrator to view it.</i>";
            }

calvin_leonhart

string(23) "test"

$isprivate does work, you're right. But what I'm trying to do is check if the admin is logged in. If an admin is logged in, then display the private message. If not, then display the error message.

I just can't get it to work.

if (!empty($_COOKIE['admin'])) { 

}

NogDog

I would recommend that if you are going to use a cookie-based admin login, then at least assign that cookie some hard-to-guess value so that a hacker cannot simply send a cookie named "admin" and then have admin access to the site. Then your check would be:

$secret = 'whatever string you want to use for the admin cookie value';
if($isprivate != 1 or (isset($_COOKIE['admin']) and $_COOKIE['admin'] == $secret))
{
   // display the message
}

calvin_leonhart

Thanks for the security issue heads up. I changed the cookie name. 🙂

However, I used the code you've provided. But now it display the pm whether the admin is logged in or not logged in. Here is the new code:

 
if($isprivate != 1 or (isset($_COOKIE['$cookiename']) and $_COOKIE['$cookiename']))
{
echo "<i>This message has been marked private. You must log in as an administrator to view it.</i>";

} else {
$message = nl2br($message);
echo "$message";
}

$cookiename is now defined in the cp.

NogDog

Are you sure your logout process is destroying the cookie? (You could do a print_r($_COOKIE) to see what cookies PHP is receiving from the browser.)

calvin_leonhart

It display Array ( [bblastvisit] => 1189853581 [bblastactivity] => 0 ), but that doesn't seem right. Looks like something from vBulletin. 😕

NogDog

I think you've flipped the $isprivate logic on us. Also, you do not want to quote an array index when it is a variable (or at least if you do quote it you need to use double-quotes, but they're superfluous). I suspect what you want is:

if($isprivate and empty($_COOKIE[$cookiename]))
{
   echo "<i>This message has been marked private. You must log in as an administrator to view it.</i>";
}
else
{
   $message = nl2br($message);
   echo "$message";
}

calvin_leonhart

I tried the code you've provided and it still doesn't work. 🙁

$isprivate is a variable to determine is the message is private. 1=yes, 0=no.

bradgrafelman

What do you mean it "didn't work" ? What was displayed?

You might want to add some debug information so we can see what's happening:

echo 'DEBUG - $isprivate = ' . var_dump($isprivate) . '<br>DEBUG - $_COOKIE[' . $cookiename . '] = ' . var_dump($_COOKIE[$cookiename]);