Sending user activation link via email. How it works?

Question

After user registration, website send activation code to email. something like that. www.domain.com/?activate=<code>

I'm creating 2 variants of activation: 1.manual 2.auto Lets say we have index.php.

1.Manual method. When someone wants to activate user manually all things are obvious:

User opens page www.domain.com/?activate

Index.php checks with following script and includes div file (which contains activation form)

   if (isset($_GET['activate'])) {
      $page='activate';
      $divfile = 'path to div.php';
    } 
    include $divfile;

Then page sends form data via ajax to activation.php file.

2.Auto method. Let's say user clicked directly to www.domain.com/?activate=<code>. What I want to do is, to check if(!empty($_GET['activate'])), if all right. I can't figure out what to do. Programmatically send something like POST to activation.php or what?

Answer 1

Normally, you would call the required function from index.php. You wouldn't post anything.

Look at include and include_once.

You should encapsulate your activation code into a separate php file that acts as your function library. Create an activate() method that does the activation in a file called activate.php.

Then, from both activation.php and index.php, you do something like this:

include 'activate.php';

// Call the activate function from activate.php
activate($code);

However, you don't Post to call other code. You simply call it from PHP.