How to secure database passwords in PHP?

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Most of the websites are providing sing up and login facility to the user. User has to create a password and use it for login to the website. But it is very important to secure the password of the user. password_hash() function provides the facility to securely store the password of the user to the database.

Syntax

password_hash(Password, PASSWORD_DEFAULT)

Example: First parameter Password will contain the normal password. The second Parameter will contain PASSWORD_BCRYPT to make secure otherwise it contains PASSWORD_DEFAULT as default. Let’s see the example to understand properly.

dbconn.php

php

<?php  
  $db_host = "localhost";
  $db_name = "secure_pass";
  $db_pass = "";
  $db_user = "root";
 
  $conn = mysqli_connect($db_host, $db_user, $db_pass, $db_name);
 
  if (!$conn){
    die ('Failed to connect with server');
  }    
?>

Signup Form:

html

<form action="index.php" method="POST">
  <label for="username">Username</label>
  <input type="text" name="username" required><br><br>
 
  <label for="password">Password</label>
  <input type="password" name="password" required><br><br>
  <input type="submit" name="submit" value="submit">    
</form>

index.php

php

<?php  
  //Include database connection file
  include 'dbconn.php';
 
  if (isset($_POST['submit'])){
    $username = $_POST['username'];
 
    // Normal Password
    $pass = $_POST['password']; 
 
    // Securing password using password_hash
    $secure_pass = password_hash($pass, PASSWORD_BCRYPT);
 
    $sql = "INSERT INTO login_tb (u_username, u_password)
    VALUES('$username', '$secure_pass')";
    $result = mysqli_query($conn, $sql);
  }
  
  // Include HTML sign up form
  include 'signup_form.php';
?>