session problem

veena

I am new to session management. In my project, I need to allow any user who is browsing our webpage to be able to navigate using his unique userid only for 30 minutes without being idle. If the page is idle for more than 30 minutes, when the user comes back after say 45 minutes, he should not be given access to any page unless he logs in once again. At the same time, I need one more functionality to be achieved.
If the user was in the process of filling a form and left half way, I should be able to save all his data(before destroying the session) and the user should be able to continue from where he had stopped. I know this is possible in php. But don't know how to do it.
It would be great if someone helps me in understanding the session management.

ir4z0r

Hi,

I'm changing the session-directory (originally to count users).
If any user refreshes his page, the timestamps of the session files
are checked, if it's older than x min, it's deleted.
Afterwards I touch() the user's own file to refresh it.

  session_save_path("./sessions");
  session_start();
  $sess_dir_str = "sessions/";
  $sess_dir = opendir($sess_dir_str);

  while ($sess = readdir ($sess_dir)) 
  {  

    if (($sess != ".") && ($sess != "..") && ((fileatime($sess_dir_str . $sess)+1800) < time()))
    {
      // 1800 = 60sec * 30 = 30min
      unlink($sess_dir_str . $sess);
    }
  }
  closedir ($sess_dir);
  touch ($sess_dir_str . "sess_" . session_id());

Originally posted by veena
I know this is possible in php.

I doubt that. If the user didn't send the information to the server, PHP can't do anything.
_Maybe_ Javascript can help

amchargue

I would think javascript could countdown and submit a form without the user being present. Not sure how your server would know that. I guess javascript could set a var before submitting it. Hmm! I never thought about that before.