Stay Logged In

They have: 51 posts

Joined: Dec 2002

Just started with PHP and have written my own news system and have just finished a good login system tutorial. I was pondering what I could add on to the login system and came to the conclusion that a "stay logged in" feature would be nifty.

Is there any other way to do it other than with cookies? I tried using cookies but they seemed to be rather temperamental and liked giving 'header' errors. If i'd managed to get them to work then I was thinking of storing a unique id, their username and their password (unencrypted) in the cookie then using $_COOKIE to verify the cookie data against the data in the db (mySQL).

However, as I mentioned, I ran in the 'header' error. So to recap:

1/ Is there a way, other than using cookies, to do a 'stay logged in' feature?

1.1/ If so what, and how?

1.2/ If not then i'd appreciate some guidance on how to do it with cookies

Busy's picture

He has: 6,151 posts

Joined: May 2001

you could use PHP sessions

Just a side note, keeping someone logged in isn't always a good thing, opens the site up for the kiddy scripters etc. a lot of sites are now limiting the cookie life to two hours max

They have: 51 posts

Joined: Dec 2002

it's possible to use PHP session to keep someone logged in? I was under the impression they were only a temporary thing that lasted the life of the browser window

Suzanne's picture

She has: 5,507 posts

Joined: Feb 2000

Staying logged in isn't really staying logged in. It's an illusion using cookies. When they leave, kill the session. When they return, check the cookie and start a new session.

Alternatively, store the session in the cookie and put the session to sleep and reactivate it when they return.

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