PHP-Based User Authentication

This tutorial teaches you to initiate user authentication using PHP, and then to authenticate users by matching the value of the global variables $PHP_AUTH_USER, and $PHP_AUTH_PW to a list of valid usernames and passwords. The sample code included with this tutorial will show you how to use either hard-coded values, a flat file, an existing .htpasswd file or a database table to manage your valid usernames and passwords. This tutorial is intended for the PHP programmer who is generally familiar with authentication, but who would be interested in learning a practical method for authenticating access to one or more Web site pages.