preventing from users opening other pages without login
php, security
Solution
You need to maintain a session for when users are logged in. At the point of login, set a session variable with their username or user ID. Then on the protected page, check if this session variable is present, before allowing them to view the page.
A basic example:
On successful login:
$_SESSION['userId'] = x;
On requesting the protected page:
if(!isset($_SESSION['userId']))
{
// not logged in
header('Location: login.php');
exit();
}
More info about PHP Sessions.
Problem
I am very new to php (started learning it 4 days ago) and I got many questions... I hav a login page named index.php and after the login/verfication of username process, the user is taken to chat.php which has a link to some other php page called someOtherPage.php... My question is, how to prevent users from directly going to someOtherPage.php without logging in by typing this in the url like " www.nameOfMyWebsite.com/someOtherPage.php/ " And after this question is answered, I wish to ask few more on php... Is it valid to ask a slightly unrelated question(with respect to the title) in the same thread?