Chapter 12 - User Appears To Stay Logged In

[swthate]

Hi guys,

 

Just got this book a while back and am loving it, very helpful.

 

I'm using Chapter 12 to implement a login/out system on my little app I've been working on. I've successfully gotten to the point of being able to log in, and logging out (to a point). In my "includes/navigation.php" file that includes the basic navigation beneath the header, I've included the logout link, but I customized it slightly. Here's my code for that part:

		  <li>
		  <?php
		  	if ( (isset($_COOKIE['userid'])) && (basename($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']) != 'logout.php') ) {
		  		echo "<a href='logout.php'>logout</a> ({$_COOKIE ['username']})";
		  	} else {
		  		echo '<a href="login.php">login</a>';
		  	}
		  ?>
		  </li>

I basically just wanted the current user's name to be shown next to the logout link within parentheses. That part is working fine, and when I click "logout" it brings me to logout.php and says I've successfully logged out. Great! However... when I click to go to any other page, the navigation again says "Logout (Name)", rather than "Login". Here's my logout.php code:

<?php

// This page lets the user logout.

// If no cookie is present, redirect the user:

if (!isset($_COOKIE['userid'])) {
	// Need the function:
	require ('includes/login_functions.php');
	redirect_user();
} else { // Delete the cookies!
		setcookie ('userid', '', 0, '/', '', 0, 0);
		setcookie ('username', '', 0, '/', '', 0, 0);
}

?>

At first I did have the time()-3600 included, but tried to take that out from this page and the login page, but that didn't seem to have an effect.

 

What am I missing here?

 

Thanks!

[swthate]

I switched to using sessions, and I'm not having that problem anymore. But, why were the cookies giving me grief?

[Larry]

Did you confirm that the delete cookies were being sent? Also I prefer to use a value of false rather than an empty string and an expiration in the past.

[swthate]

Apparently using sessions did not fix it. After attempting a logout, I then checked the cookies, and there is still a SESSID cookie present.

 

Here's part of my logout.php:

session_start(); // Access the existing session.

// If no session is present, redirect the user:

if (!isset($_SESSION['userid'])) {
	// need the functions.
	require ('includes/login_functions.php');
	redirect_user();
} else {
	$_SESSION = array(); // Clear the variables.
	session_destroy(); // Destroy the session itself.
	setcookie ('PHPSESSID', '', time()-3600, '/', '', 0, 0); // Destroy the cookie.
}

Thanks!

[HartleySan]

Try adding the following to your code to see what's store in the $_SESSION and $_COOKIE variables:

echo '<pre>';
print_r($_SESSION);
print_r($_COOKIE);
echo '</pre>';

[swthate]

I added that to one of my pages, and it displayed the user id and user name, as well as a long string. Then I clicked logout and went back to that page, and it was empty. And now the login/logout toggle links on the index page and navigation bar are working correctly now....

 

*scratches head*

[HartleySan]

Does that mean that it's correctly working now?

I'd continue to play around with it until you're sure that in all instances, you get the intended behavior.

[swthate]

Alright, I think this is what's going on:

 

I have two logout links. One on the navigation bar at the top of the page, and one as a button on the dashboard/index page (the navigation is not included on index.php, for now). When I use the link from the navbar, it seems to work correctly. But when I use the logout link on index.php, it tells me I've successfully logged out, but when I visit another page it says I'm logged in still.

[HartleySan]

What's the difference between the two logout scripts?

[swthate]

Oh, I realized what I did wrong. Dumb mistake. Here's the code from the index.php:

<a href="login.php">
	<p class="button center">
		<?php
			  if (isset($_SESSION['userid'])) {
			  	echo "Logout";
			  } else {
			  	echo "Login";
			  }
		?>
	</p>
</a>

Wrapping the <p class="button"> with an anchor tag is what I had to do with some other buttons on the index page, so that some hover states worked correctly. I don't have the time yet, but when I move the php tags to encompass the anchor tags as well, and just include the whole button in the if clause, it should work peachy then.

 

Thanks.

[HartleySan]

Glad you found the issue.

Thanks for sharing the solution.