Using excel to confirm login

[Glepkyj]

Hello all, I am new to the forum but have been using labview for aout 2 years now. I have a VI that I want to execute but only after prompting the user for a username and password. I figure to have a excel file with all valid usernames and passwords. Has anyone any examples like this that they have come upon? Thanks

Gerald 

[smercurio_fc]

Yes. Look in the examples that ship with LabVIEW. There's a "Login Dialog" example. That uses a table that's set up with the usernames and passwords. Do you have to have it in Excel? That would just make things more difficult. You can keep the user/passwords in a simple text file and just read the file into an array, replacing the string table that the example uses. That, to me, seems like a much easier solution than trying to directly read Excel.

[mikeporter]

How secure does this all need to be? As an analogy, is this password more like the combination lock on a bank vault designed to keep a thief out - or a hook on a screen door that simply keeps the neighborhood kids and dogs from wandering in uninvited?

Mike...

[Glepkyj]

Thanks, this is something definately I can look into. Thanks for the help!

[Glepkyj]

Hi Mike, this does not have to be highly secure. I basically have a water dispensing system for student labs that I will control with Labview. I will have students log in, once their name is verified, it will execute the next loop to ask for volume required and turn on a water solenoid. Once they are done, I will take there volume with username and store it to a file to keep track of the usuage.

[mikeporter]

Ah, then it sounds like the Excel file idea will work well. If the students will be creating their own passwords, one thing though that you need to make sure they understand is that the passwords they provide are not secure on your computer. Sometimes people will use the same password for everything and it would be A Bad Thing if one of your students would use the same password for your system as they do for accessing their bank account information online!

As a side note it is amazing what people will do sometimes without thinking: I was once working for a company that makes inkjet printers. When people call technical support with printing problems they are sometimes asked to send in a print sample along with the printheads they are using. One time I was going through new packages that we had received from customers and found a package where the "print sample" the guy had sent was his bank statement, complete with name, address, social security number, account numbers - the works! And to top it off from the information that was there it appears that the guy was a lawyer to boot! Needless to say I personally walked the papers down to the shredder...

Mike...

[Glepkyj]

That's something for sure I have to look out for. I guess I will create their password for them. I too have worked in the inkjet industry and have seen some pretty "amazing" things.

Gerald

[Glepkyj]

That's something for sure I have to look out for. I guess I will create their password for them. I too have worked in the inkjet industry and have seen some pretty "amazing" things.

Gerald

[smercurio_fc]

If you're going down the Excel route to store the passwords I would suggest taking a look at this example on reading an Excel file directly into a table. You can merge this into the Login Dialog that I mentioned before.