How can PHP developers prevent users from accessing pages using the back button or copied URLs by properly managing cookies?

To prevent users from accessing pages using the back button or copied URLs by managing cookies, PHP developers can set a unique token in a cookie when a user visits a page. On subsequent visits, the PHP code can check if the token in the cookie matches the expected value. If the token does not match, the user can be redirected to a different page or prompted to log in again. 

// Set a unique token in a cookie when a user visits a page
$token = md5(uniqid(rand(), true));
setcookie('page_token', $token);

// Check if the token in the cookie matches the expected value
if(isset($_COOKIE['page_token']) && $_COOKIE['page_token'] !== $expected_token) {
    // Redirect the user to a different page or prompt them to log in again
    header('Location: login.php');
    exit;
}

Keywords

PHP cookies session management URL validation security

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