I-Am-Bot Code, technology and life

12Aug/112

Update on phpUserAuth

Posted by Srinath

My apologies for the lack of activity on phpUserAuth and a couple of other scripts. I have decided to spend sometime each week on my small projects, and to answer comments and questions regularly. As a first step towards that, phpUserAuth is now available on github. The project will be hosted there for better code management and it also makes it easier for other devs to contribute or customize it for their own needs. I realize that the code needs a lot of work, and some parts of it will have to rewritten from scratch. The immediate need is to cleanup some code, and improve the file organization. The commented JS source files will be uploaded and reorganized.

And to anyone who is using/planning to use it, I would like to know the most important feature that is needed immediately. That, along with enhancements to the admin page will be worked on. If anyone has already worked on enhancements, please put in a pull request on github.

Here's hoping for regular activity on the project!

Filed under: code, projects 2 Comments
14Nov/100

php-znisms released

Posted by Srinath

php-znisms is a PHP API for the SMS services provided by ZNISMS (currently only for India). This API can be used to send single or multiple messages, and check the account status.

Requirements
PHP version 5 or higher with support for CURL and SimpleXML

Usage
Detailed guide coming soon. Please see the file test.php for details on how to use it

Download

Tagged as: , , No Comments
20Jul/1016

phpUserAuth Released!

Posted by Srinath

It's finally done! The package is up for grabs, with a quick starter guide.

Details

Download

Demo

Please go through the project page for more details!

The Readme.txt file inside folder "readme" contains instructions for installation and usage

Leave your comments/questions/suggestions on the project page.

Out.

23May/100

Introducing phpUserAuth

Posted by Srinath

Update: Please visit the project page for more details

After weeks of fighting with myself, I finally got down to work on something that has been on my mind for sometime now. Yes, it is yet another user authentication/management system in PHP. There are already some great ones out there, and some not so good ones. I wanted a system that was secure, flexible, and easy to work with. What took me an entire week of effort is presented below. Without further delay, presenting phpUserAuth

Features

  • Secure with support for sessions based and/or cookie based authentication
  • Tons of configuration option for those who know what they are doing. For others, its easy as a cake!
  • Passwords are *always* hashed before they are sent over the network, with fallback to plain text if JavaScript is not supported in the browser
  • Only salted, hashed passwords are saved in the database. Even if the DB is stolen, it is almost impossible to get the original password
  • Support for multiple simultaneous sessions or a single active session
  • Administrator can choose how users are activated after they signup. It can be automatic activation, manual activation by the admin, or an activation mail can be sent to the user
  • Password is NEVER sent over the email. If the user forgets his password, he can request a password reset mail.
  • User defined access control levels
  • Flexible. If the administrator wants to add another field, simply updated the configuration file, and put the field in the signup form! The rest is taken care of by the script!
  • Prevention from XSS attacks - all data sent to the server is cleaned using the excellent InputFilter class
  • Support for template based HTML email notifications with changeable templates
  • Emailing done through the excellent PHPMailer with support for SMTP+SSL
  • Custom redirection after login/logout
  • Pre-designed forms
  • Snap in install - Simply drop the folder into your existing application, configure a few site options and database settings, and you are done!

Requirements

  • PHP 5+ as the core classes are OO
  • MySQLi support
  • MySQL 5+ database server

Is that too much to ask? That being said, if you run a fairly recent server, all these should be there by default. For testing, you can check out XAMPP which is available for Windows, Mac and Linux!

License
I'm planning to release it under some open source license. If that doesn't work out, it will still be FREE

Download
It is not completely done yet. The admin area needs some work. So it will be released, when its done

Notes
1) As always, it isn't perfect! If you find any bugs, errors, or know a way where things can be done better, please leave a comment!
2) The application hasn't been profiled yet. There WILL be places where I might have complicated things. Will be taken care of after its been released

16Jun/090

Announcing jGridTable

Posted by Srinath

After my post about developing a new jQuery plugin, I've managed to shake off my apprehensions, and get it hosted on googlecode. The project is titled jGridTable, and hopefully isn't already taken. I will dedicate a page to it in this blog, where I can keep track of day to day developments, invite comments and suggestions from people, and more importantly, ask for guidance. And if at all I get it to work, I intend to publish it with the liberal MIT license, so that others can keep improving it. My overall aim for the project is to make it as flexible as possible, without bloating up.

So here is to jGridTable. Lets see how far it goes.