A sea of change
Its been almost a year since I last wrote something on this blog (not considering those little scripts as posts). And no, I haven't taken up the popular will-write-n-number-of-posts-a-month resolution. Rather, I want to transform this tech blog into my only blog where I also pen my thoughts on a variety of subjects like politics, music, movies, fiction, books etc. I realized ANY writing is good, as long as one keeps writing. Also, since I've started fiddling around with Garageband, I'd like to post a few of my noise generating sessions online. And this place is going to be it.
And to keep up with the attempt to change, I will also be creating a custom theme for this blog. It will take months, but will be worth the effort. A few scripts like phpUserAuth which a few people *might* be using will be updated in the coming weeks, provided my regular job gives me a breather.
To change.
php-znisms released
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
Introducing TinyPop
TinyPop is a lightweight (1.5 KB minified) JavaScript for Growl like notifications. It can be used as an alternative to jGrowl when you don't want to use jQuery for a simple task.
phpUserAuth Released!
It's finally done! The package is up for grabs, with a quick starter guide.
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.
Introducing phpUserAuth
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