User authentication

User authentication is a most usual task, which is required on almost every web site, where user get services or information according to data, he has submiited or modified in his private area.

Below is the working example of authentication form, where PHP and mySQL are used. You can check it out with any login/password pair you want. Create an entry and log in to check if it works. Since it is an example application, number of tries is limited.

Usual approach by authenticating is encrypting of data. Password is stored is so called hashed form. For example myPassword will look like $2y$10$4Ymy5uNrmon/Yywn3VjxyeCkB2abii3OaGurutpD8hmLJ.JzAnBv2 in hashed form. Each server language has its own built in encrypting instruments.

PHP offers easy to use functions hash_password() and verify_password() to get this done. I have earlier version of PHP on server, where these functions are not supported, and had to look for other solutions.

To illustrate general idea I include below some js code, which encrypts text using a key.

Insert text you want to encode in upper text field and press Encode button. Result text field will display encoded text.

Important part of encrypting is to get encrypted hash string look back as readable original text. Copy hashed string from below and insert it in upper text field. Click Decode button to get your original text displayed in Result text field.