The PHP Secure Stateless Cookies Class lets you create a system that authenticates with secure cookies instead of using PHP sessions. Furthermore, it allows for:
Secure password hashing Secure cookie hashing Automatically updates md5 passwords Can interpret (Non-Portable) PHPass hashes without changing your current user database
Documentation Check out the documentation for code samples and usage.
Purpose There is quite a bit of discussion between stateful and stateless. For a better understanding of stateless cookies and stateless PHP applications, consider reading the article Hardened Stateless Session Cookies (PDF) by Steven J. Murdoch.
Changelog
(12.05.2012) v1.0 Release version
(12.06.2012) v1.1
Added a much more secure salting algorithm Updated properties to follow OOP standard Added verifyAuth as security measure