Photo by Richard Parmiter

The internet is slowly groping towards a single user identity system through the OpenID initiative, but one of the nice things about working inside a corporate firewall is that there’s already a directory of user names and passwords. In the dominant Microsoft world, you rely on Active Directory to keep track of all that information. The ‘Active’ prefix usually strikes fear into anyone integrating non-MS technology into a Windows world, since it often translates to ‘proprietary’, but they’ve actually done a really good job of making the directory information available through the LDAP open standard.

If you want to try converting your PHP-based internet app to intranet authentication, check out this tutorial on using LDAP from PHP with an Exchange server. If you’re interested in the details of using LDAP with PHP in general, things like how to install the LDAP module if it isn’t there by default on your PHP installation, check out this two-part guide.