In the previous chapter, we went over basic file operations such as importing data from files, exporting information to files, and logging data to files. In this chapter, we will go over the basics of how authentication and access control can be implemented into our application. Our student portal application can now perform three major tasks: the first is to add a student, the next is to add a course, and the third is to register a student to a course. Till now, we have a universal user that can do any of these operations. In this chapter, we will modify this behavior to set up session handling, access controls, and user roles for these users. We will use sessions to persist user data and provide a personalized experience when they login. The topics that we will discuss in this chapter are: