asked on

Authentication against a bunch of files..needs to be fast

I am going for broke here.... but I really need this:

I need to create a simple HTML authentication screen with username and password. When the user enters their user/pass I need to check about 200 files in a directory in my server to make sure that they are registered.

Let's say the files are in the: /opt/mymembers/ directory
and their filenames are like: 00001.cgi, 00002.cgi, 00003.cgi...etc....(one for each registered user)
and the contents of these files looks like: (each file is 12 lines long, but I only care about the first two for authentication, but might want to extract the "otherdata" lines for use later):

USERNAME
PASSWORD
otherdata
otherdata
otherdata
otherdata
otherdata
otherdata
otherdata
otherdata
otherdata
otherdata

BTW - if it helps there is another file is this mymember directory that is kind of a master cross reference with just the usernames and a pointer to their file... one on each line... looks like: (it is called mymemberlist.cgi)

USERNAME1|!!|00001
USERNAME2|!!|00002
USERNAME3|!!|00003

I will up the points even more for a fast solution.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

maneshr

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grommett

Ok, this answer works well for systems I've built. I can't say how scalable it is, but it would be faster than checking individual files I think.

This subroutine as written checks a user name and password, but I think you can probably tweak it how you want.

I have a form asking for user name and password and then call a cgi with this subroutine. Another subroutine then builds an validation html page with a hidden value being the area they are authenticated for.

Obviously, you'll need to have code in the cgi to deciper posts from a form.

======
# This subroutine will not only check validation, but also return
# another field in the your bar delimited database. You can use this returned value as
# a hidden value to send the person to a particular page after they are validated.

# for example, if I have a master list like your's and I want the 4 field
# returned for the $division variable, I'd do this:
# (in this example, I've parsed the values for a form the person submitted
# and the form had a user and pswd field to enter).

# $division = &return_password_match($dbase_pswd, $FORM{'user'}, "1", $FORM{'pswd'}, "2", "4");

# terms:
# $dbase_pswd = the name of the master file to check
# $FORM{'user'} = the user name
# "1" = the field in the master file where user names are found
# $FORM{'pswd'} = the password
# "2" = the field in the master file where passwords are found
# "4" = if a match is found, the field to return

# An empty string returned means they aren't registered.

sub return_password_match
{

my ($db_file_name, $matchone, $fieldone, $matchtwo, $fieldtwo, $fieldreturn) = @_;

my (@all, $line, @field, $selected, $output, $item);

# convert string of items separated by $delimiter to array
@selectfields = split(/$delimiter/, $selected_items);

open(FILE, "$db_file_name");

while(<FILE>)
{
       chop;

       @all = split(/\n/);
       foreach $line (@all)
{
@field = split(/\|/, $line);

# We're setting this up for a case insensitive search
# $field[$itm] =~ /.*$keyword.*/i
# if ($selectvalue eq $item) {$selected = "1";}
if ($matchone eq $field[$fieldone])
{
if ($matchtwo eq $field[$fieldtwo])
{
$output = $field[$fieldreturn];
close(FILE);
return $output;
}
}

}#end of file loop
}#end of while file loop
close(FILE);

return $output;
}

georgia

ASKER

thanks grommett, but manshr's solution seems totally complete to me, since I don't have to modify it much....

georgia

ASKER

maneshr... this seems perfect, but I have a couple errors when I don't explicitly run "perl check_password.cgi"..... can you take a look?

bach:~/www/cgi-bin$ ./check_password.cgi
../check_password.cgi: use: command not found
../check_password.cgi: =new: command not found
../check_password.cgi: syntax error near unexpected token `$username=$query->para
m(''
../check_password.cgi: ./check_password.cgi: line 8: `$username=$query->param('us
ername');'
bach:~/www/cgi-bin$

georgia

ASKER

Adjusted points from 300 to 350

georgia

ASKER

I made a couple small changes and got rid of the errors... thanks!

maneshr

i think the change that you made might have to do with the location of the PERL file ie. its located on a diff directory on your server, right??

georgia

ASKER

not really... I am an oldschool perl guy and I have never messed with modules, but I think it had to do with trying to use the CGI module, I don't think they had it - if that makes any sense. I basically chopped up everything anyway and integrated it with another piece of code, worked out pretty well - I appreciate your help.