Back To Basics - PHP

Now, there are a couple of different ways to go about adding this type of security to your application. The first (and most primitive, though also the simplest) is to simply have your Web server handle authentication for you. If you're using the Apache Web server (you probably are), you can access the server's authentication features to add basic security to your Web site.

In order to illustrate how this works, let's consider a simple example. Let's assume the existence of the following directory structure:

/usr/local/apache/htdocs/
index.html
alpha.html
beta.html
admin/
index.cgi

Now, let's suppose that I want to protect the directory "admin". It's fairly simple to do with HTTP authentication.

The first step is to ensure that your Apache build includes support for the "mod_auth" module. You can check this by executing the Apache binary with the "-l" command-line option.

$ /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd -l
Compiled-in modules:
http_core.c
mod_env.c
mod_log_config.c
mod_mime.c
mod_negotiation.c
mod_status.c
mod_include.c
mod_autoindex.c
mod_dir.c
mod_cgi.c
mod_asis.c
mod_imap.c
mod_actions.c
mod_userdir.c
mod_alias.c
mod_access.c
mod_auth.c
mod_setenvif.c
mod_php4.c

If you don't see "mod_auth" in the list, you'll need to recompile Apache with support for that module.

Next, check Apache's configuration file, "httpd.conf", and ensure that the option

AllowOverride All

is present in the section for the server document root. This allows you to override global server settings via per-directory ".htaccess" control files.

Next, create a file named ".htaccess" in the "admin" directory, and put the following lines into it:

AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /usr/local/apache/users
AuthName "Administration Module"
Require valid-user

This tells the server that access to the "admin" directory (the directory in which the ".htaccess" file is located) is to be controlled, and access is to be granted to users based on the username/password information in the file "/usr/local/apache/users"

The final step is to create the "users" file. Change to the "/usr/local/apache" directory (or whichever directory you've decided to store the user data in) and use the "htpasswd" command:

$ htpasswd -c users john
New password: ****
Re-type new password: ****
Adding password for user john

You can add more users to this file if you like (remember to omit the "-c" parameter for all subsequent additions, as that parameter creates a brand-new, empty file).

Remember *not* to store the "users" file in a directory under the server document root, or else malicious users will be able to view and download the password database through a browser.

Now, attempt to access the "admin" directory via your Web browser. The browser should pop up a dialog box and prompt you for a username and password. Access to the "admin" directory will be granted only if you enter a correct username and password, as defined in the "users" file.

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