How to safely store a password inside PHP code?

Question

How can I have a password inside PHP code and guarantee that no one viewing the page in the browser can retrieve it?

Is:

Answer 1

As suggested, store the password sha1, salted and peppered

function hashedPassword($plainPassword) {
    $salt = '1238765&';
    $pepper = 'anythingelse';    
    return sha1($salt . sha1($plainPassword . $pepper));
}

and then compare the two values

if ($stored === hashedPassword('my password')) {
   ...
}

And if you can't store your hashed passwords outside of the server root, remember to instruct apache to forbid the access to that file, in your .htaccess file:

  Order Deny,Allow
  Deny from all