On Exit, then what ?

Anon

What exactly happens when a user closes a web page, or leaves your web site altogether? Is there any event that gets triggered that PHP can trap and make use of?

Let's say you've built some temp files and stashed some user info in them (can't use sessions in 3.0, and "global" arrays via hidden variables are way too messy). Is there any way to trap an event using PHP so I can delete those temp files if the user leaves my web page prematurely (his computer crashed, power failure, she just got bored and left, etc.) ?

Barring that, is there any way to set up a temp file so it truly is "temporary", e.g, it gets deleted when the user ends the session?

timbach2

Look into phplib -- it allows you to have sessions in php3.

There is no trigger that says "I'm done" when a user leaves a web page-- the only way is to get rid of your temp files would be to "time out" your temp pages, using sessions or a cron job (which is beyond me...)

I would consider putting your temp info either into cookies or into a database and use a "garbage collection" as used in phplib.

Hope this helps.

Tim

Anon

Yes, I would like to be able to use sessions. Unfortunately, my web host (Verizon) only provides PHP 3.0.8. And there is no way they are going to allow me to edit their configuration files to bring in support for PHPLIB.

The Meloni book (Chap. 16) has an intro to cookies, but then launches off into a mostly useless discussion of using them with authentication, without even explaining how they really work in the first place. Got any suggestions on a good tutorial for using cookies?

Also, what if the user disables cookies via his browser's settings. If so, wouldn't this undo everything you were tyring to do using cookies? Or will they still work on the server side, despite the user's client side settings?

This sort of reminds me of the JavaScript dilema I've hit. All my JS efforts could be for naught if the user disables JS. I am still trying to find out how this can be done. IE 5.5 only lists options for Java Console, Java Logging and JIT compiler, but nothing about turning off JS.