ChatGPT Creates a Login Page with PHP and MySQL

Me:

Can you please create the following:

1. An html login page that asks for a username and password. The form should submit to a login.php page.

2. A login.php page. This should connect to a mysql database table. The password should not be stored in plaintext. On successful login, it should create a cookie and redirect to a welcome.php page. If the password is incorrect, it should print a “login failed” message.

3. SQL to create the mysql database table for username and passwords that login.php references. It should contain a user_id column, which will act as the primary key.

4. a welcome.php page. It should print “You have successfully logged in” if the browser has the cookie from a successful login, otherwise it should print a “You are not logged in” message.

ChatGPT:

Can you please create the following:
1. An html login page that asks for a username and password. The form should submit to a login.php page.
2. A login.php page. This should connect to a mysql database table. The password should not be stored in plaintext. On successful login, it should create a cookie and redirect to a welcome.php page. If the password is incorrect, it should print a “login failed” message.
3. SQL to create the mysql database table for username and passwords that login.php references. It should contain a user_id column, which will act as the primary key.
4. a welcome.php page. It should print "You have successfully logged in" if the browser has the cookie from a successful login, otherwise it should print a “You are not logged in” message.

Sure, here is an example of how you could create the html login page:

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<html>
<head>
<title>Login</title>
</head>
<body>
<form action="login.php" method="post">
<label for="username">Username:</label><br>
<input type="text" id="username" name="username"><br>
<label for="password">Password:</label><br>
<input type="password" id="password" name="password"><br><br>
<input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>
</body>
</html>

This is an example of the login.php page that connects to a mysql database table and checks the entered password:

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<?php
$username = $_POST["username"];
$password = $_POST["password"];

//connect to mysql database
$servername = "localhost";
$dbUsername = "myusername";
$dbPassword = "mypassword";
$dbName = "mydatabase";

$conn = new mysqli($servername, $dbUsername, $dbPassword, $dbName);

//check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}

//query the database for the entered username
$sql = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = '$username'";
$result = $conn->query($sql);
$row = $result->fetch_assoc();

//if the username is found, check the password
if ($result->num_rows > 0) {
//hash the entered password and compare it to the stored password hash
if (password_verify($password, $row["password"])) {
//if the password is correct, create a cookie and redirect to the welcome page
setcookie("username", $username, time() + (86400 * 30), "/"); //86400 = 1 day
header("Location: welcome.php");
} else {
//if the password is incorrect, print a login failed message
echo "Login failed";
}
} else {
//if the username is not found, print a login failed message
echo "Login failed";
}

$conn->close();
?>

Here is an example of SQL to create the mysql database table for the username and passwords that the login.php page references:

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CREATE TABLE users (
user_id INT(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
username VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
password VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL
);
And finally, here is an example of the welcome.php page that checks for a cookie and prints the appropriate message:

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<html>
<head>
<title>Welcome</title>
</head>
<body>
<?php
if (isset($_COOKIE["username"])) {
echo "You have successfully logged in";
} else {
echo "You are not logged in";
}
?>
</body>
</html>

What format should the user's password be in the database table?

It is generally recommended to store password hashes rather than plaintext passwords in a database. A password hash is a one-way encryption of the password that cannot be easily reversed, so even if someone gains access to the database, they will not be able to easily determine the original passwords.

To create a password hash, you can use the password_hash function in PHP. This function takes the plaintext password and a hashing algorithm as arguments, and returns the hashed password. Here is an example:

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$password = "mypassword";
$hashedPassword = password_hash($password, PASSWORD_DEFAULT);
In the example above, $hashedPassword will contain the hashed version of the password. You can then store this hash in the database in the password field for the corresponding user.

When a user logs in and enters their password, you can use the password_verify function to check if the entered password matches the stored password hash. This function takes the plaintext password and the hashed password as arguments, and returns true if they match and false if they don't. Here is an example:

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$enteredPassword = "mypassword";
$hashedPassword = "hashedpasswordfromdatabase";

if (password_verify($enteredPassword, $hashedPassword)) {
//login success
} else {
//login failed
}
By using this approach, you can ensure that the user's password is stored securely in the database.

Conclusion

It’s impressive that this does work:

https://ai.mattjung.net/login.html
matt
GPtest1237H

The only manual steps I needed to do were:

Create the database
Create the database user
Add grants to the database user
Insert a user into the database table
Populate database connection info into login.php

It also had some shortcomings. In earlier attempts:

It did not hash the password in the database. It stored the password in the database as plaintext.
It did not have a primary key in the database table.

It’s not a bad start but the lack of basic security practices is a concern. If someone were to create their own application that ultimately stores sensitive data with ChatGPT, it seems like there is a significant risk that the data could be easily leaked by an attacker under the right circumstances.

Me:

ChatGPT:

Conclusion

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