What are some alternative methods to using sessions for maintaining user login state in PHP applications?

Using sessions for maintaining user login state in PHP applications can sometimes be inefficient or insecure. An alternative method is to use JSON Web Tokens (JWT) for authentication and authorization. JWTs are stateless, secure, and can be easily decoded and verified on the server side. 

// Generate JWT token upon successful login
$payload = array(
    "user_id" => $user_id,
    "username" => $username
);
$jwt = JWT::encode($payload, $secret_key);

// Store JWT token in a cookie or local storage
setcookie("jwt", $jwt, time() + 3600, "/");

// Validate JWT token on subsequent requests
$jwt = $_COOKIE['jwt'];
try {
    $decoded = JWT::decode($jwt, $secret_key, array('HS256'));
    $user_id = $decoded->user_id;
    $username = $decoded->username;
} catch (Exception $e) {
    // Handle invalid token
}

Keywords

JWT cookies token-based authentication OAuth persistent login

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