cflogin

Description

A container for user login and authentication code. ColdFusion runs the code in this tag if a user is not already logged in. You put code in the tag that authenticates the user and identifies the user with a set of roles. Used with cfloginuser tag.

Category

Security tags

Syntax

<cflogin 
    applicationToken = "token" 
    cookieDomain = "domain" 
    idletimeout = "value"> 
    ... 
    <cfloginuser 
        name = "name" 
        password = "password" 
        roles = "roles"> 
</cflogin>

See also

cfloginuser, cflogout, GetAuthUser, GetUserRoles, IsUserInAnyRole, IsUserInRole, IsUserLoggedIn, Securing Applications in the Developing ColdFusion Applications

History

ColdFusion 8: The applicationtoken attribute lets you specify a unique application identifier for each application, or the same value for multiple applications.

ColdFusion MX 6.1: Changed behavior: the cflogin variable exists when ColdFusion receives a request with NTLM or Digest (HTTP Negotiated header) authentication information.

ColdFusion MX: Added this tag.

Attributes

Attribute

Req/Opt

Default

Description

applicationtoken

Optional

The current application name

The login that applies to the application. To let users log in to only one application, specify a unique value for that application. To let users log in to multiple applications, specify the same value for those applications. If you do not set a value for the applicationtoken attribute, the default value is CFAUTHORIZATION_applicationname.

cookiedomain

Optional

Domain of the cookie that is used to mark a user as logged in. Use this attribute to enable a user login cookie to work with multiple clustered servers in the same domain.

idletimeout

Optional

1800

Time interval, in seconds, after which ColdFusion logs off the user.

Usage

The body of this tag executes only if there is no logged-in user. When using application-based security, you put code in the body of the cflogin tag to check the user-provided ID and password against a data source, LDAP directory, or other repository of login identification. The body must include a cfloginuser tag to establish the authenticated user's identity in ColdFusion.

You control the data source and are responsible for coding the SQL within the cflogin tag; make sure that the associated database has user, password, and role information.

The cflogin tag has a built-in cflogin structure that contains two variables, cflogin.name and cflogin.password, if the page is executing in response to any of the following:

  • Submission of a form that contains input fields with the names j_username and j_password.

  • A request that uses HTTP Basic authentication and, therefore, includes an Authorization header with the user name and password.

  • A request that uses NTLM or Digest authentication. In this case, the username and password are hashed using a one-way algorithm in the Authorization header; ColdFusion gets the username from the web server and sets the cflogin.password value to the empty string.

    You can use these values in the cflogin tag body to authenticate the user, and, in the cfloginuser tag, to log the user in. The structure is only available in the cflogin tag body.

Example

The following example shows a simple authentication. This code is typically in the Application.cfc onRequestStart method or in the application.cfm page.

<cflogin> 
    <cfif NOT IsDefined("cflogin")> 
        <cfinclude template="loginform.cfm"> 
        <cfabort> 
    <cfelse> 
        <cfif cflogin.name eq "admin"> 
            <cfset roles = "user,admin"> 
        <cfelse> 
            <cfset roles = "user"> 
        </cfif> 
        <cfloginuser name = "#cflogin.name#" password = "#cflogin.password#" 
            roles = "#roles#"/> 
    </cfif> 
</cflogin>

The following view-only example checks the user ID and password against a data source:

<cfquery name="qSecurity" 
    datasource="UserRolesDb"> 
    SELECT Roles FROM SecurityRoles 
    WHERE username=<cfqueryparam value='#cflogin.name#' CFSQLTYPE="CF_SQL_VARCHAR" 
    AND password=<cfqueryparam value='#cflogin.password#' CFSQLTYPE='CF_SQL_VARCHAR' 
</cfquery> 
 
<cfif qSecurity.recordcount gt 0> 
<cfloginuser name = "#cflogin.name#" 
    password = "#cflogin.password#" 
    roles = "#trim(qSecurity.Roles)#" > 
</cfif>