Monks,
i'm reeeally confused! I hope someone can help. I know these are all trivial Qs, but i suppose someone must ask them! I have few subs that should handle an admin page, where users can add, delete etc. db entries. my script starts with setting up cookies for user and password. once that is done there is the sub login that checks for valid users and upon errors calls the sub error_page,else it prints a menu using sub la_menu:
sub login {
    my $username    = $q->param('username');
    my $password    = $q->param('password');
    my $SQL    = "SELECT username, password FROM user WHERE username =
+ '$username'";
    my @row;
    @row = $dbh->selectrow_array($SQL);

    unless (exists $row[0]) {
        &error_page;
        exit;
    }

    unless ($password eq "$row[1]") {
        error_page();
    }
    la_menu();
}#end#of#sub#login
sub error_page {
    print    $q->start_html(-title=>"some.com| ERROR", -style=>{src=>"
+../../mycss.css"});
    print<<HTML;
    <p class="edit_header"><strong>some.com | ERROR</strong></p>
    <h2 class="error">Invalid username or password</h2>
    <p class="footer"><a href="http://www.some.com">some.com</a></p>
HTML
} #end#of#sub#error_page

sub la_menu {
    if ($q->param( "add" )) {
        add_new();
    } elsif ($q->param( "edit" )) {
            edit();
    }
    print<<HTML;
    <form method="get" name="la_manu" class="edit">
    <input name="edit" type="submit" value="Edit Properties " class="b
+uttons">
    <input name="add" type="submit" value="Add New" class="buttons">
    </form>
HTML
    
}#end#of#sub#la_menu

[download]
until here it works fine, however once one of the buttons of the menu sub is pressed it always prints the error page. i guess what i am unclear is, if i should check for valid user with every subroutine. i also tried to check if the cookies equal the username and password passed from the login form, the result seems to be the same! this is the sub that gets called when a button in sub la_menu is pressed: 
sub add_new {
    my $user    = $q->cookie('username');
    my $pass    = $q->cookie('password');
    
    if ($cookie eq $user, $cookie1 eq $pass) {
    print<<HTML;
        ...
    HTML
        }else {
        error_page();
    }
}

[download]
hope this is clear?! thanks
r_mehmed

Edited 2003-03-05 by mirod: changed the title

In reply to Trouble with cookies being used for validation (was: cookies) by r_mehmed

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