Sending user/pass in HTTP header

[Anon]

I have a directory protected by .htaccess. I then have a separate directory protected by a PHP/MySQL log in script which is where the user is initially asked to log in.

How do I pass the username and password to the .htaccess protected directory using PHP so that the user IS NOT required to log in a second time?

Thanks in advance.

[Anon]

I just did this in Tcl, so I'm sure of the exact PHP syntax, but you need to encode the string username:password in base64 and then pass in the encoded string in the http headers. (the colon is literal.)

I guess you need are base64_encode() and header(). again i'm not sure of exact PHP syntax but header call should be something similar to:
header(Authorization: basic:$base64_encoded_string)

(p.s. the Tcl tutorial I used to do this is located at http://www.bluetitan.com/~tdarugar/td/tcl/http_pwd_tcl.html )

[Anon]

oops:

"so I'm NOT sure ..."