How to Create a Password Strength Validator in PHP Tutorial

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Inside this article we will see the concept i.e How to Create a Password Strength Validator in PHP. Article contains the classified information i.e Password Strength Validation in PHP.

Password strength validation is an essential aspect of modern web applications. Passwords are the primary means of authentication for users, and ensuring that users create strong passwords is critical to maintaining the security of your application.

In this article, we’ll discuss how to perform password strength validation in PHP. We’ll cover the basic concepts of password strength and provide a simple code example that you can use in your PHP applications.

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Let’s get started.

Password Strength Concepts

Before we dive into the code, let’s briefly review the concepts of password strength. There are several factors that contribute to a password’s strength, including:

  1. Length: Longer passwords are generally stronger than shorter passwords.
  2. Complexity: Passwords that include a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols are generally stronger than passwords that only use lowercase letters.
  3. Unpredictability: Passwords that are not easily guessable, such as those that don’t include common words or phrases, are generally stronger than passwords that are easy to guess.

With these factors in mind, let’s take a look at how we can implement password strength validation in PHP.

Password Strength Validation in PHP

To validate the strength of a password in PHP, we can use regular expressions to check for various criteria, such as length, complexity, and unpredictability.

Here’s a simple example that demonstrates how to perform password strength validation in PHP:

<?php 

function validate_password_strength($password) {
  // Check password length
  if (strlen($password) < 8) {
    return false;
  }

  // Check password complexity
  if (!preg_match('/[A-Z]/', $password) || 
      !preg_match('/[a-z]/', $password) ||
      !preg_match('/[0-9]/', $password) ||
      !preg_match('/[^a-zA-Z0-9]/', $password)) {
    return false;
  }

  // Check password unpredictability
  if (preg_match('/password|123456789/', $password)) {
    return false;
  }

  return true;
}


$password = "Try#Me%$123";

if(validate_password_strength($password)){

  echo "Password strength is excellent";
}else{

  echo "Password strength is very weak";
}

Code Explanation

This function takes a password as input and returns true if the password meets the following criteria:

  1. Length: The password must be at least 8 characters long.
  2. Complexity: The password must include at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, one number, and one symbol.
  3. Unpredictability: The password must not include the words “password” or “123456789”.

To check the length of the password, we simply use the strlen function to get the length of the password string and compare it to the minimum length requirement.

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To check the complexity of the password, we use regular expressions to check for the presence of at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, one number, and one symbol. The regular expressions used in this example may need to be modified depending on your specific password complexity requirements.

To check the unpredictability of the password, we use another regular expression to check for the presence of the words “password” or “123456789”. Again, this regular expression may need to be modified depending on your specific requirements.

Testing

Let’s try for some input passwords.

Case #1

For Password value: “Try#Me%$123

This program will output:

Password strength is excellent

Case #2

For Password value: “mypassword@123

Output of Program:

Password strength is very weak

We hope this article helped you to learn How to Create a Password Strength Validator in PHP Tutorial in a very detailed way.

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