sending popup messages to specific users

[langals]

Hi

Wondering if someone could help me.

I want to be able to detect which users are logged on to my website (I am using session variables). I then want to send some of these users popup messages, depending on what service they are registered for.

I know that this will not be easy. Hope that someone can point me in the right direction.

Thanks

langals

[FrozNic]

well.. the way i would aproach it is to make a temp table in ur database.. called users or whatever.. and when someone logs in, put them in that temp table .. that will tell u who is logged in.. as far as messaging.. hm.. i'm thinking about it, and can't think of a good way to do it.

[Ravenous]

INstead of creating another table, just have a cell for each user called currLoggedIn or something like that. 1 if they're logged in, 0 if they're not.

[FrozNic]

the reason i said to do the temp table was so u had a seperate entity to place your messages if they needed to be stored.. etc. or any other info u wanted with your messages.. (dates, times, ie)

[jcantrell]

Just a thought, and I think I will try this out on our user system tomrrow. You could on every page, in my case I would put it in the footer so it wouldn't mess anything up, put in an sql statment that will call the user table, and check to see if an instant message field is blank. If it is not blank you could make it pop up a message that you have entered into it, and when it pops it up, you could have it also delete the message so it would not pop up every time they hit the page.

Quick Example:

Have a page that shows users online, with a link that says send instant message. when you click that link it will take you to a page with a text area or whatever. It will store what you enter in that text area into the usersonline table.

On the pages: Code not right, just example
$sql = mysql_fetch_array("SELECT * FROM useronline WHERE username = '$username' AND messagefield !='')
while ($a_row =mysql_fetch_array($sql))
{
JAVASCRIPT ALERT DISPLAYING $a_row[messagefield];
$sql2 = "DELETE messagefield from useronline where username = '$username' AND messagefield !=''
}

The more I think about this, the more I think it will work. You need to register the user is online on every page, and also delete users that have not moved in a while. If you are interested in this, send me an email: [e-mail]. I am at home now, but when I get to work tomorrow I would be more than happy to send you my useronline code. I will also clean up the code I have posted here and implement it on our system tomorrow if I get a chance. Anyone out there let me know what you think.

[jcantrell]

Hey, Just wanted to let you know that I got this up and working.. here is the actual code that I put in the footer of my pages.

$getmessage = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM useronline WHERE username='$username' AND message!=''");
$message_rows = mysql_num_rows($getmessage);
if ($message_rows !=0)
{
while ($a_row =mysql_fetch_array($getmessage))
{
print "<script>alert(\"$a_row[message]\")</script>";
$message = "";
$delete = mysql_query("UPDATE useronline SET message='$message' WHERE username='$username'");
if(!($delete)) {
print "Message Delete Failed > ";
}
}
}

Let me know if you want my online users code. I also have thoughts of turning this into a two way messaging system, between users.