Using Basic Authentication

Basic HTTP authentication was released as part of the HTTP 1.0 specification and continues much as it was originally deployed. It works on the premise that a user must establish his or her browser’s credentials in a realm. Browser sessions can have many concurrent realm credentials at any time, provided they authenticate against different sources.

The basic authentication prompt is nonconfigurable and a by-product of the web browser that you are using. When you want to configure the login screen’s look and feel, you must implement cookies and sessions, which are covered in Chapter 12. Figure 11-1 illustrates the Microsoft Internet Explorer authentication prompt. The network realm www.techtinker.com in the authentication prompt is set by the BasicLoginRealm.php program covered later in the chapter.