You need to read a string from the command line without it being echoed as it's typed; for example, when entering passwords.
On Unix systems, use /bin/stty to toggle echoing of typed characters:
// turn off echo `/bin/stty -echo`; // read password $password = readline(); // turn echo back on `/bin/stty echo`;
On Windows, use w32api_register_function( ) to import _getch( ) from msvcrt.dll:
// load the w32api extension and register _getch() dl('php_w32api.dll'); w32api_register_function('msvcrt.dll','_getch','int'); while(true) { // get a character from the keyboard $c = chr(_getch()); if ( "\r" == $c || "\n" == $c ) { // if it's a newline, break out of the loop, we've got our password break; } elseif ("\x08" == $c) { /* if it's a backspace, delete the previous char from $password */ $password = substr_replace($password,'',-1,1); } elseif ("\x03" == $c) { // if it's Control-C, clear $password and break out of the loop $password = NULL; break; } else { // otherwise, add the character to the password $password .= $c; } }
On Unix, you use /bin/stty to control the terminal characteristics so that typed characters aren't echoed to the screen while you read a password. Windows doesn't have /bin/stty, so you use the W32api extension to get access _getch( ) in the Microsoft C runtime library, msvcrt.dll. The _getch( ) function reads a character without echoing it to the screen. It returns the ASCII code of the character read, so you convert it to a character using chr( ) . You then take action based on the character typed. If it's a newline or carriage return, you break out of the loop because the password has been entered. If it's a backspace, you delete a character from the end of the password. If it's a Control-C interrupt, you set the password to NULL and break out of the loop. If none of these things are true, the character is concatenated to $password. When you exit the loop, $password holds the entered password.
The following code displays Login: and Password: prompts, and compares the entered password to the corresponding encrypted password stored in /etc/passwd. This requires that the system not use shadow passwords.
print "Login: "; $fh = fopen('php://stdin','r') or die($php_errormsg); $username = rtrim(fgets($fh,64)) or die($php_errormsg); preg_match('/^[a-zA-Z0-9]+$/',$username) or die("Invalid username: only letters and numbers allowed"); print 'Password: '; `/bin/stty -echo`; $password = rtrim(fgets($fh,64)) or die($php_errormsg); `/bin/stty echo`; print "\n"; // nothing more to read from the keyboard fclose($fh); // find corresponding line in /etc/passwd $fh = fopen('/etc/passwd','r') or die($php_errormsg); $found_user = 0; while (! ($found_user || feof($fh))) { $passwd_line = fgets($fh,256); if (preg_match("/^$username:/",$passwd_line)) { $found_user = 1; } } fclose($fh); $found_user or die ("Can't find user \"$username\""); // parse the correct line from /etc/passwd $passwd_parts = split(':',$passwd_line); /* encrypt the entered password and compare it to the password in /etc/passwd */ $encrypted_password = crypt($password, substr($passwd_parts[1],0,CRYPT_SALT_LENGTH)); if ($encrypted_password == $passwd_parts[1]) { print "login successful"; } else { print "login unsuccessful"; }
Documentation on readline( ) at http://www.php.net/readline, chr( ) at http://www.php.net/chr, on w32api_register_function( ) at http://www.php.net/w32api-register-function, and on _getch( ) at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/vccore98/HTML/_crt_ _getch.2c_._getche.asp; on Unix, see your system's stty(1) manpage.
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