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Restricting Access Based on Cookie Values

Now for the fun part—using your cookie skills to restrict access to parts of your Web site! Suppose you created a login form that checked for values against a database. If the user is authorized, you send a cookie that says as much. Then, for all pages you want to restrict only to authorized users, you check for the specific cookie. If the cookie is present, the user can see the page. If the cookie is not present, the user is either sent back to the login form, or a message regarding access restrictions can be printed to the screen.

We'll go through each of these steps in the next few sections.

Creating the Authorized Users Table

When you're integrating user accounts into a Web-based application, it is ...