New to PHP 4.0 is the ability to do HTTP authentication, althrough It is available only when running PHP as a module with Apache.

  ex.: 

  Header('www-authenticate: basic realm = "some caption or text" ');

  Header('HTTP / 1.0 401 Unauthorized');

  ex.: 

   ex.: 

  $_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_USER']

  $_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_PW']

  Sample Code for review : 

  $query = 'SELECT first_name from users where username = '{$_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_USER']}'

                password = password('{$_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_PW']}');

  $result = @mysql_query($query);

  $row = @mysql_fetch_array($result);

  IF ($row) {

       . . . . .

       . . .

  }