How can PHP sessions and cookies be effectively used to manage user authentication and authorization?

To manage user authentication and authorization using PHP sessions and cookies, you can store user credentials in a session variable upon successful login and set a cookie with a unique identifier. Then, on subsequent page loads, you can check if the session variable is set and the cookie value matches the stored identifier to authenticate the user. 

// Start session
session_start();

// Check if user is logged in
if(isset($_SESSION['user_id']) && isset($_COOKIE['auth_token'])) {
    // Validate user credentials using session and cookie values
    $user_id = $_SESSION['user_id'];
    $auth_token = $_COOKIE['auth_token'];
    
    // Perform authentication and authorization logic here
} else {
    // Redirect to login page
    header("Location: login.php");
    exit();
}

Keywords

PHP sessions cookies user authentication user authorization security.

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