What are the best practices for structuring PHP code to handle user authentication and session management?

When handling user authentication and session management in PHP, it is important to follow best practices to ensure the security and reliability of your application. One common approach is to use PHP sessions to store user authentication information and manage user sessions. This involves setting session variables upon successful login and checking these variables on protected pages to ensure that only authenticated users can access them. 

// Start the session
session_start();

// Check if the user is already authenticated
if(isset($_SESSION['user_id'])) {
    // User is authenticated, proceed to protected page
} else {
    // User is not authenticated, redirect to login page
    header("Location: login.php");
    exit();
}

Keywords

authentication session management PHP code structure user management security practices

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