INTERVIEW QUESTIONS PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES CGI PROGRAMMING DETAILS

Question: Can I identify users/sessions without password protection?

Answer: The most usual (but browser-dependent) way to do this is to set a cookie.
If you do this, you are accepting that not all users will have a 'session'.

An alternative is to pass a session ID in every GET URL, and in hidden
fields of POST requests. This can be a big overhead unless _every_ page
requires CGI in any case.

Another alternative is the Hyper-G[1] solution of encoding a session-id in
the URLs of pages returned:
http://hyper-g.server/session_id/real/path/to/page
This has the drawback of making the URLs very confusing, and causes any
bookmarked pages to generate old session_ids.

Note that a session ID based solely on REMOTE_HOST (or REMOTE_ADDR)
will NOT work, as multiple users may access your pages concurrently
from the same machine.

[1] Actually I don't think that's been true of Hyper-G since sometime
in '96. However, general advances in web server technology, such as
Apache's mod_alias or mod_rewrite, make it straightforward without
the need for CGI.

The most usual (but browser-dependent) way to do this is to set a cookie.
If you do this, you are accepting that not all users will have a 'session'.

An alternative is to pass a session ID in every GET URL, and in hidden
fields of POST requests. This can be a big overhead unless _every_ page
requires CGI in any case.

Another alternative is the Hyper-G[1] solution of encoding a session-id in
the URLs of pages returned:
http://hyper-g.server/session_id/real/path/to/page
This has the drawback of making the URLs very confusing, and causes any
bookmarked pages to generate old session_ids.

Note that a session ID based solely on REMOTE_HOST (or REMOTE_ADDR)
will NOT work, as multiple users may access your pages concurrently
from the same machine.

[1] Actually I don't think that's been true of Hyper-G since sometime
in '96. However, general advances in web server technology, such as
Apache's mod_alias or mod_rewrite, make it straightforward without
the need for CGI.
Source: CoolInterview.com

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