What are some best practices for handling user authentication in PHP, especially in terms of securely storing and verifying passwords?

When handling user authentication in PHP, it is crucial to securely store and verify passwords to protect user data. One best practice is to use password hashing functions like password_hash() to securely store passwords in the database and password_verify() to verify passwords during login. 

// Hashing and storing a password
$password = 'user_password';
$hashed_password = password_hash($password, PASSWORD_DEFAULT);
// Store $hashed_password in the database

// Verifying a password during login
$entered_password = 'user_entered_password';
$stored_hashed_password = 'retrieved_hashed_password_from_database';

if (password_verify($entered_password, $stored_hashed_password)) {
    // Password is correct
    // Proceed with authentication
} else {
    // Password is incorrect
    // Handle invalid login attempt
}

Keywords

password hashing password_verify bcrypt password_hash salting

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