AParson

Aha! I think you may be right. I only have to ask the customer, if the data will have to be decripted at some point. Either way, anything that can give the customer the expected result will do (either hash/encryption function). Basically it's a (15-character maximum) password, and a UNIX timestamp. The encrypted (or hashed) output should be in a "hex triplet" (web color) format... something like "000000" or "fa37d1". Those are gonna be recorded in two separate, extra fields. I asked the customer why does it have to be that way... he then went red, sighed and asked "Can you do it or not?". He's a very old-fashioned and stubborn person, I have to say. That might help, depending on whether or not the customer will need that data decrypted at some point. If not, in the end I might just use "md5()" and get the 6 first characters, which should give him what he wants, but I have a felling it's not gonna be that simple... Thanks everyone for your inputs, I'll let you know how it panned out.

I didn't test it to see if it works, but here goes (just replace table names and other stuff with the ones you have). <?php //Allowing session vars session_start(); //Connecting to a MySQL DB $connection = @ mysql_connect('host', 'user', 'pass') or die('Error: cannot connect database.'); mysql_select_db('dbname', $connection); //Retrieving the value typed on a form textbox (I'm assuming there was a form on the previous page, with a "password" field) $typed_password = ''; if (isset($_POST['txtPassword'])) $typed_password = trim($_POST['txtPassword']); //Hash the data retrieved from the form field, to compare with the hashed value in the DB table field. //Note that I didn't salt this one, that's gonna be up to you, if the one recorded on the table is salted. $hashed_password = hash('md5', $typed_password); //Querying for the user name, comparing the typed password with the one on the BD $sql = 'SELECT theTable.theName FROM theTable WHERE (theTable.thePassword="' . $hashed_password . '");'; $success = @ mysql_query($sql) or die('Error retrieving data.'); if (mysql_num_rows($success) > 0) { //Success! Get the user name, and... $userdata = mysql_fetch_array($success); //... create all necessary session vars. //You can use this one to check every page if you are still logged in $_SESSION['loggedin'] = 'yes'; //And this one, just for display purposes $_SESSION['username'] = $userdata['name']; //Just for display echo 'Welcome back, ' . $_SESSION['username'] . '.'; } else { //Password didn't match. echo 'Wrong password.'; } //Closing query and connection to DB mysql_free_result($success); mysql_close($connection); ?>

Sorry, I think I just said rubbish. I checked your code, and the line where #respond is supposed to anchor might need to be changed. You have "<a name="add_response"></a>" in your code, so: 1) Change the value "add_response" for "respond" 2) Move the whole "<a name="respond"></a>" inside "<h3 id="respond">Leave a Reply</h3>" 3) Eliminate "id="respond"" from <h3 id="respond"> The result should look like this: <h3><a name="respond">Leave a Reply</a></h3> Hope it helps.

I might be wrong, but #anchor_name only works if you use "filename.extension#anchor_name" (like in "page.html#myanchorname").

Hi, I am working on a project, and my customer is demanding some sort of "non-standard" hashing to encode field values on a database. This customer wants something exclusive, difficult to be decoded, and would accept no argument proving that the existing hash algorithms are good enough for the job. What makes it even more challenging for me is that I don't have much experience in PHP. The output should be something similar to a hex triplet (web color), so... this basically means I cannot use MD5, SHA, etc. This also means that PHP hash() function is useless in this case, unless there is a hash algorithm I don't know about, and that gives me the output I need. What I need is something like: $output = functionthatdoesntexist("string to be encoded"); The "$output" var should contain something like: 19f7b4 (this is just a random value I am using to illustrate the format required for the output.) Now here are my questions: 1) Is there a PHP function that encodes a string/number, and gives me back a "hex triplet"? 2) If such function doesn't exist, is there a way to create one from scratch? How should I start? I just can't figure out how to solve this problem, so any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance, AP

Hi, New here, just registered a moment ago... Now back on topic: I might be wrong (cause I'm not that good in PHP), but isn't "unexpected T_STRING" related to missing semicolon?