Allow redirect after successful login

Question

I have a .htaccess that denies access to all of my documents EXCEPT for the login page, which is apiLogin.php. As shown in my code below:

<Limit GET POST>
       order deny,allow
       deny from all
       allow from 127.0.0.1
</Limit>
<Limit PUT DELETE>
       order deny,allow
       deny from all
</Limit>

DirectoryIndex apiLogin.php

<Files ~ "execute.php$">  
Order Allow,Deny
Deny from All
allow from 127.0.0.1
</Files>

<Files ~ "printAPI.php$">  
Order Allow,Deny
Deny from All
</Files>

<Files ~ "Orders.xml$">  
Order Allow,Deny
Deny from All
</Files>

<Files ~ "Config.xml$">  
Order Allow,Deny
Deny from All
</Files>

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule (^|/)s_orderlist(/|$) - [F]

I want my execute.php to allow redirection from apiLogin.php AFTER a successful login(Which is already being checked by a form - I can't redirect it to the page however because the htaccess denies it / I need an exception). How do I achieve this? Do I do this through .htaccess or through php?

Answer 1

Allow execute.php in ht access and add a session check.

session_start();
if($_SESSION["loggedIn"] != true){
       echo 'not logged in';
       header("Location: apiLogin.php");
       exit;
    }

And on apiLogin, when user login set session to true

$_SESSION["loggedIn"] = true;