HTTP authentication logout via PHP

Mu. No correct way exists, not even one that's consistent across browsers.

This is a problem that comes from the HTTP specification (section 15.6):

Existing HTTP clients and user agents typically retain authentication information indefinitely. HTTP/1.1. does not provide a method for a server to direct clients to discard these cached credentials.

On the other hand, section 10.4.2 says:

If the request already included Authorization credentials, then the 401 response indicates that authorization has been refused for those credentials. If the 401 response contains the same challenge as the prior response, and the user agent has already attempted authentication at least once, then the user SHOULD be presented the entity that was given in the response, since that entity might include relevant diagnostic information.

In other words, you may be able to show the login box again (as @Karsten says), but the browser doesn't have to honor your request - so don't depend on this (mis)feature too much.

Method that works nicely in Safari. Also works in Firefox and Opera, but with a warning.

Location: http://logout@yourserver.example.com/

This tells browser to open URL with new username, overriding previous one.

The simple answer is that you can't reliably log out of http-authentication.

The long answer:
Http-auth (like the rest of the HTTP spec) is meant to be stateless. So being "logged in" or "logged out" isn't really a concept that makes sense. The better way to see it is to ask, for each HTTP request (and remember a page load is usually multiple requests), "are you allowed to do what you're requesting?". The server sees each request as new and unrelated to any previous requests.

Browsers have chosen to remember the credentials you tell them on the first 401, and re-send them without the user's explicit permission on subsequent requests. This is an attempt at giving the user the "logged in/logged out" model they expect, but it's purely a kludge. It's the browser that's simulating this persistence of state. The web server is completely unaware of it.

So "logging out", in the context of http-auth is purely a simulation provided by the browser, and so outside the authority of the server.

Yes, there are kludges. But they break RESTful-ness (if that's of value to you) and they are unreliable.

If you absolutely require a logged-in/logged-out model for your site authentication, the best bet is a tracking cookie, with the persistence of state stored on the server in some manner (mysql, sqlite, flatfile, etc). This will require all requests to be evaluated, for instance, with PHP.