How do login forms work

Therefore, you must escape this data using the PHP htmlspecialchars function before displaying it in the browser, so that any HTML tag it contains becomes harmless. Now, let's create a "logout. When the user clicks on the log out or sign out link, the script inside this file destroys the session and redirect the user back to the login page.

Finally, in this section we will add the password reset utility to our login system. Using this feature logged in users can instantly reset their own password for their accounts. Is this website helpful to you? Please give us a like , or share your feedback to help us improve. Connect with us on Facebook and Twitter for the latest updates. Example Download. Previous Page Next Page. You usually set a cookie with a expiry date and save the user session and info in memory.

So every time a request is made, if the user is not authenticated, you authenticate him, generate and send him a cookie with, say, 5h expiry. So, in the next 5 hours, whenever a request comes in with that cookie, you trust that the user is an authenticated, valid user and you don't have to check the database.

It's not how every site does it nor it is the only way to manage session and cookies but I think it is the most widely used. You should probably use sessions, but that's pretty much the gist of it. That way the data doesn't accidentally persist.

I mean, for my simple site at home, that's how I do it. But it's still locally hosted, so the security is guaranteed to be crap. Oh, and no need to check with the database whenever you click on another link -- too much time wasted. Typically, an application takes advantage of the session that is established between the browser and the web server, and makes a note that that session is "authenticated".

If the browser is closed, or after a certain period of time passes, the session is automatically closed. If the user does an explicit logout, the application marks the session as not-authenticated. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams?

Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. Ask Question. Asked 10 years, 9 months ago. Active 10 years, 9 months ago. Viewed 15k times. I mean, you click some link on site browser redirect you to that page site checks your cookies site grab username and password from cookies site checks is that data is valid via connecting to database show page to you Is that correct?

Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. User enters credential. System validates credential. Upon successful authentication, server saves user object into session. Note: The fields are the columns; some of the fields are username, password, address, etc.

In the text box, enter the number '4'. You can also increase the number based on the requirement. As the name suggests, it does the same task. It connects the database to the form that was created. This demo has used an if statement to check whether the code is working or not. A suitable message is printed, depending on if the database was found. When a user selects the logout option, the code mentioned below will automatically redirect the user back to the login page.

Learn PHP form validation in our next lesson. Are you planning to take the plunge and do a course on PHP?