How to Retrieve the Windows Username in PHP?

Retrieving Windows Username in PHP

In an intranet setting where PHP web applications reside, it's often desirable to obtain the Windows username of the current user who is accessing a webpage. Besides extracting the IP and hostname, this provides additional information about the user's identity.

Solution: Utilizing the AUTH_USER Variable

To retrieve the Windows username, PHP provides access to the AUTH_USER request variable. This variable contains the username of the authenticated user if the web server employs basic or Windows integrated authentication.

In the absence of anonymous access to the web application, this variable will be empty. However, if Windows integrated authentication or basic authentication is enabled on the server, the username of the authenticated user will populate this variable.

Windows Integrated Authentication in Active Directory Domains

In Active Directory domains, a seamless experience can be achieved when clients use Internet Explorer. If the web server's permissions are appropriately configured, IE submits the domain credentials to the server automatically without prompting the users to log in. Consequently, the AUTH_USER variable will contain the domain-qualified username in the format "MYDOMAINuser.name."

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