jklmnn / phpmta

PHP Message Token Authentication

phpMTA

PHP Message Token Authentication

What is phpMTA?

phpMTA is a PHP library that creates an authentication method based solely on email (or other message types).

How does it work?

The authentication is based on the acces to a mail address. By entering the mail address, a token is send to this address. This token works as one time password and has to be entered (alternatively a login link to click on can be sent) to login. Once logged in it works just as a normal authentication method would work.

Why?

This library addresses the password problem. With this authentication no password is stored on the server and the user does not need to remember a password. All you need is an email address.

How can I use it?

All pages that need authentication need to include auth.php. The is_authenticated() method returns True if the user is logged in and False if not. On the login page use send_token() which takes a mail address as POST argument and sends a random token to this email.The token is also sent via PHP to the authenticate() method which logs the user in and sets cookies.
To logout just call deauthenticate() which destroys the session and deletes the cookies.

To configure the parameters see the values in conf.php.