Cookie tutorial?

[eluser]BrianDHall[/eluser]
Login and auth systems seems like they aught to be really complicated, but they really aren't.

All you are really doing is storing a username and password, then getting it back from the user and making sure it matches something in the database.

Sessions make doing this once per 'session' really nice and easy. Manual session and cookie handling is only slightly annoying. It's one bit of magic that its really nice to allow to 'just work', and learn the details as they hit you in the head