setting a time

[Anon]

Hey all (again),
Once again I am stumped. I should probably take a programming class then this stuff would make a lot more sense. Anyway, what I'm trying to do is to take a (begining) timestamp to put on the first page of a form, and list that timestamp on a series of other pages as when it actually took that stamp...not the current time.

For example: say you first view the page at 11:34:48am, on the following pages I want it to say:
The current time is 11:38:19am
You started at 11:34:48am

I understand date, mktime and all of that stuff. But I don't fully understand these functions. What ends up happening when I try this is i keeps displaying the current time and not the starting time.

Is there a way to grab that starting time variable and keep it static, without timestamping it into a database or a file? I realize it would rely on global variables and what not, but can someone point me in the right direction? Am I just not understanding PHP's date/time functions correctly? Thanks everyone, you are all great 🙂

./brm

[Anon]

The easiest way to probably do this is right on the first page, set the current timestamp in a cookie. That way you will know when they first visited the site. Then on all the other pages, you can grab that timestamp and display it however you like.

Derek

[Anon]

Ok, well I could do a session maybe. What I'm trying to do is a Setup script that goes through and creates variables, I would prefer it not to rely on external items such as a database, flat file, cookie or session. But if that's not possible to do then I guess I'll try the session route.

What I'm trying to do is some benchmarking of this script. That's the whole purpose of the time thing. Does anyone know of a way to grab a time and keep it static without those things I listed above? Thanks to Derek, I hadn't even thought of the cookie/session route. But anymore pointers would be highly appreciative!! 🙂

./brm