Problem bulding Login Page

mshane8

Hey Everyone-

I cant really determine the issue I am having. I have a login.php page that requires a username and password. Once the user hits the submit button the form is redirected to a functions.php page which is supposed to query the database and validate the user and password or otherwise return error messages. Whats happening is when the user hits submit the url is directed to the functions page and it is blank.

So I cant determine whether it is not connecting to the database or if it is connecting and my syntax is incorrect somewhere. Although, I dont get any syntax errors.

Upon successful login I would like the user to be redirected to an index.php page but am not sure where to insert that.

Here is the code for my functions.php page and my login.php page. Thanks so much in advance for taking a quick look. Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.

<?php
	include ('includes/constants.php');

//establishing a connection
$connection = mysql_connect(DB_HOST, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD);
	if (!$connection) {
		die ("Could not connect to database" . mysql_error());
}
//selecting the database to use
$db_select = mysql_select_db (DB_NAME, $connection);
	if (!$db_select) {
		die ("Databse selection has failed:" . mysql_error());	
	}

?>



<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<head>
	<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf8"/>
	<meta name="keywords" content=""/>
	<meta name="description" content=""/>
	<title>Hockey Home Page</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" media="all" type="text/css" href="styles/styles.css" />
</head>

<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<div id="header">
	<h1>Welcome to my site about Hockey</h1>
</div>
<div id="leftbar">

</div>
<div id="main">
<form action="includes/functions.php" method="post">
	<h1> Please Log In</h1>
   <p>User Name:<br/>
   <input type="text" name="user_name" size= "20" maxlength="20" /></p><br/>
   <p>Password:<br/>
    <input type="password" name="user_pass"  size= "20" maxlength="12" /></p><br/>
   <p><input type="submit" name="submit" value="Login" /></p>
 </form>
</div>

<div id="footer">Site Design by MShane | &copy; 2012 | All Rights Reserved</div>

</body>
</html>
<?php
//close the connection to the database
	if (isset($connection)) {
		mysql_close($connection);	
	}
?>

here is the functions.php page which is called-

<?php

function check_login ($connection, $user_name='', $user_pass='') {

	$global = $connection;
	$errors = array(); //Initialize the error array

	//validate the e-mail address
	if (empty($user_name)) {
		$errors[] = 'Oops, you forgot to enter a user name.';
	} else {
		$n = mysqli_real_escape_string($connection, trim($user_name));
	}

	//validate the password
	if (empty($user_pass)) {
		$errors[] = 'Opps, you forgot to enter a password.';
	} else {
		$p = mysqli_real_escape_string($connection, trim($pass));
	}

	if (empty($errors)) {
		//if everything checks out ok

		//retrieve the user_id and first_name for that username and password combination

		$q = "SELECT users_id, user_name
			  FROM users
			  WHERE user_name = '$n'
			  AND user_pass = '$p'";

		$r = @mysqli_query($connection, $q); //run the query

		//check the result:
		if (mysqli_num_rows($r) == 1) {
		//fetch the record
		$row = mysqli_fetch_array ($r, MYSQLI_ASSOC);

		//return true and the record
		return array(true, $row);
		} else {
			//not a match!!
			$errors[] = 'Sorry, the user name and/or password you provided do not match those on file.';
		}
	} // end of empty errors IF

	//return false and the errors
	return array(false, $errors);
} //end of check login function


?>

bradgrafelman

Your functions.php file defines a function called check_login(), but that's it... it doesn't actually do anything (such as call that function).

Furthermore, one script uses the older, deprecated [man]mysql[/man] extension while the other uses the newer [man]MySQLi[/man] extension. You should pick one (MySQLi) and stick with it for consistency (not to mention the fact that the former is older and deprecated 😉).

mshane8

hey brad-

thanks a lot. so on my login page the connection to the database mysql_connection should be mysqli_connection? is that correct.

also I am wondering how to call the check_login function on my login page. Do I call the function specifically in the action attribute for the submit button or do I reference the functions.php page in the action attribute of the form tag after the submit button is clicked? currently assigning the action attribute to the functions page simply redirects the page away from the login page to the functions page but nothing happens. I dont want to be redirected to the page correct? I simply want the function check login called from the functions page.

thanks a lot for taking a look.