http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=79188

mkilic has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

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Re: Authentication
by tinman (Curate) on May 09, 2001 at 22:23 UTC

    There are several nodes that I know of that address this issue.. The following links are ones that you might find interesting/useful to you...

    Login encryption and CGI understanding
    CGI Password

    A Super Search on this topic will surely turn up some more informative posts...

    The short version is: You can use SSL (Secure Sockets Layer, also known as Secure HTTP (https) to authenticate/encrypt a session). You can also use cookies and session variables, so there is no real need to keep a connection alive...

    Simply, prompt the user for a username/password, set a special variable (either through a cookie or some other mechanism) on the client so that you know the person has logged in ok... thereafter, whenever a request is made to the browser, check for the existence of this special variable and its value.. a person who has not logged in properly will not have this special session variable set..once the person logs out, unset this variable...
    HTH