CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpfirefox
user35288
user35288

Reputation:

Uniquely identify one computer

I work for a university, and i'm implementing a PHP web app that needs to have different behavior when it is visited from one certain computer. The problem i am running into is that from the webserver, using $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] and gethostbyaddr(), i can only identify the router that a computer is going through, and not a specific computername.

Is there anyway i can set that one specific computer to identify itself to the server so the server knows when the webapp is being accessed from that machine? The computer is running firefox in kiosk mode, so addons or greasemonkey scripts are allowed...

Upvotes: 6

Views: 8990

Answers (9)

karim79
karim79

Reputation: 342635

[Change Firefox's user agent header][1] to something that uniquely identifies that machine, you can then extract this string in PHP from $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'].

Upvotes: 7

Rasel
Rasel

Reputation: 5734

Try this.

$something=$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];

To uniquely identify user check $something matches your own.(which is on your php code). if yes then proceed access.

Upvotes: 0

tau-neutrino
tau-neutrino

Reputation: 3300

Why not implement an authentication system and place those users who need the special functionality into a special group?

Upvotes: 1

carbonr
carbonr

Reputation: 6067

Im sure you got a very good answer but if you are looking for solution that uniquely identifies the COMPUTER rather than the BROWSER then look in to FLASH COOKIES a.k.a FLASH SHARED OBJECTS.

Theses are more powerful and can be used to store data up to 100KB and remains the same across all browsers that has flash, so it is better solution to uniquely identifying a user

Upvotes: 0

Paul Dixon
Paul Dixon

Reputation: 300825

You could set a cookie, or alternatively, you could modify the UserAgent header that your Firefox installation is using to something distinctive.

To change the User Agent string, just enter about:config as an address in the address bar of FireFox, the location where you normally enter a URL (link). I recommend to preserve the original value, which you can get when you enter just about: in the address bar.

Now press the right mouse button to get the context menu and select "String" from the menu entry "New". Enter the preference name "general.useragent.override", without the quotes. Next, enter the new User Agent value you want Mozilla Firefox to use. I added my name and a link to my web site to the original value. You can also pick one from the list of User Agent strings. Check the new value by entering about: in the address bar.

You can retrieve this User-Agent string from $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] in php.

Upvotes: 4

VolkerK
VolkerK

Reputation: 96159

How about ssl and client certificates?

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/ssl/ssl_howto.html#accesscontrol

Upvotes: 3

T.J. Crowder
T.J. Crowder

Reputation: 1074038

Some thoughts:

  • Set a durable cookie. (Since FF is in kiosk mode, you should be safe from the users clearing it.)
  • Have that kiosk use a different URL (perhaps with a query string parameter).

What I wouldn't do is work according to the machine's MAC address (which Gibson tells us is possible) or similar; too fragile when hardware gets fixed, etc.

Upvotes: 2

daniel
daniel

Reputation: 9835

Don't you have a SessionID ? Your sessionID should be unique enough to identify a computer.

Upvotes: -4

MiffTheFox
MiffTheFox

Reputation: 21555

You can set a cookie. This will be remembered by the client and transmitted to the server as part of every request. More information here: http://www.w3schools.com/PHP/php_cookies.asp

Upvotes: 12

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