coding

[Anon]

Is it possible to track a user when he/she logs logs off website. I am developing a webcam site and when a user logs on,this then sets them Live in mysql and shows them up as live in parts of the site. If they log off without loggnit out or get disconnected, it is possible to track or notice this and then log them out accordingly? I have seen things like this work on www.swebcam.com and on citizenx.com but that uses asp. Any help would be appreciated.

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Thanks

[Anon]

well, one way would be to timestamp the user when they log in. then update the timestamp each time they load a page. if they are idle too long, then they are no longer considered an active user and logged off.

[Anon]

Good idea, is it possible to autoreload a small frame on the page and auto update every active users timestamp and then go offline if this is idle for 1-2 minutes?

Can you set a program to run a query on mysql every min or so or would you have to wait for a user to load the page and set the query running?

Cheers
Jules

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[Anon]

You can use META tags in HTML to make the page refresh every x second. This is probably nice for a webcam so that users don't have to keep the image manually updated.

Seeing as the refresh will run every x second (in each client at different times), you can safely log a user out when his timestamp is older than (now - x). You can do this for every refresh of the page (some overhead involved, lots if many users), or use a cron job.