ASP.NET Forms Authentication

ASP.NET has powerful server-side user authentication built into it that automatically encrypts authentication cookies and information and can be used to allow users or throw them out of a system accoding to security levels set by the site owner.

Documentation about these features is sparse and complex. Chris Ullman walks you through the ASP.NET authentication procedures, explaining how to customise it to your own requirements.

This tutorial is suitable for intermediate ASP.NET developers.

File Uploading with PHP

In this article we look at how to upload files using PHP. This technique can be extremely useful, and is used on many sites for example, in content management systems or forums which allow the user to upload an image to represent them.

In this standalone tutorial, we start by looking at how to create the HTML form required to upload files. We then look at how to upload a single file, and then expand the code to allow multiple files to be uploaded. Finally we look at some useful file handling commands, and how to read the dimensions from an image file.

This is suitable for MX and MX 2004 users, from beginners upwards.

Dreamweaver MX 2004 PHP Server Behaviors

In today's tutorial we will be taking a look at creating a log in system using PHP Server Behaviors. Our system will provide an admin area for creating/editing and deleting users from the system, as well as the log in system itself. We'll be working with the newly released Dreamweaver MX 2004 for this article, as this will give us the opportunity to work with the new user authentication Server Behaviors that have been introduced with MX 2004.

After reading this tutorial, you'll be able to:

1. Create a table of users who could log into the site, along with their respective user access levels 2. Create a login page that authenticated users against that database table using the Log In User server behavior 3. Use the Restrict Access To Page server behavior, along with some of our own code to redirect authenticated users to the correct areas of our site 4. Use the Restrict Access To Page server behavior with defined access levels to make sure that only Admin users could access the admin section of the site 5. Use the Master-Detail Page Set application object to create a structure for the admin pages.

The ASP.NET Cache Object

In "classic" ASP many developers used the Application object as a cache. They stuck everything from single variables to the whole files in there, and when they updated the information, they then forced a refresh of the entire Web application to update the Application object. Not only was this like a using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, it was a memory intensive way of doing thing and the more junk that was accumulated in the application object, the more sluggish your web server would become.

The Cache object is a large feature addition to ASP.NET and seems to have been hidden away in the documentation. Despite initially appearing daunting, there's no reason why anyone can't use it. This is a tutorial on how to add and remove items from the Cache object both implicitly and explicitly, using the dependencies or timestamp expiration policies which mean that you can force the contents of the cache to be expired and then reload them if either a specific date/time is reached, the timestamp on a file changes, or if an item inside the cache itself changes.