Using vB members database in other applications

[pgowder]

My site is a Native American Pow Wow website, www.powwows.com. I currently have a Pow Wow calendar application that is written in perl. I'm now beginning a rewrite of it using php. Back when I first introduced the calendar, I had UBB, so it was hard to intergrate the two. Now that I have my users in a db, I would like to intergrate them.

In php applications, how can I force the users to log in before they do an action such as submit an new event? Or edit and event?

I know the vBulletin has a built in calendar, but the system that I am building goes beyond what that calendar does.

thanks