Counting Users Online

rapmonkey

What is the easiest, fastest, and most efficient way to count the number of users online with PHP? And how would I go about doing it? I've heard its sessions, but I also need to retrieve data from all current sessions, not only count them. How could I do that?

Thanks for any help.😃

planetsim

I suggest taking a look at this tutorial.
http://www.spoono.com/tutorials/php/users_online/

rapmonkey

I would like to do it by just gathering information from current sessions, rather than dealing with databases...It's on a site that is heavy in database usage already. I heard doing it with sessions is about 7 times faster.

ksandom

I'm going to be working on a similar thing soon. I was planning on doing it by having a small table that is populated by only online users (ie they logon: entry goes in table, they logoff: entry comes out).

This would allow a fast, low impact (on resources) info to be gathered.

As for sessions, unless there's more to them than I think, these are more for keeping data between accesses, so more of an individual logon thing rather than an overview of everything that is going on.

Notes:
With this solution (small table), you will probably need some maintenance script that collects and chucks out users who have stopped using the system but have forgotten to log out. Thus time of last access might be a useful thing to store. This is the type of thing that can get really complex, but you can keep it simple too.

I hope this helps.

planetsim

I never said to copy the tutorial, but it was there as an example.

And what you heard about sessions being 7times faster is bull****.

There has to be some sort of central point where the data can be added to you have some sort of idea how many people are online. Database is best to use, but you can however go with the harder, slower way of textfiles.

ksandom has given you some very good and very easy ways to do things with an Online Users Script.

This is the type of thing that can get really complex

Yes they can but normally complex ones arent efficient.

rapmonkey

Originally posted by ksandom
I'm going to be working on a similar thing soon. I was planning on doing it by having a small table that is populated by only online users (ie they logon: entry goes in table, they logoff: entry comes out).

This would allow a fast, low impact (on resources) info to be gathered.

As for sessions, unless there's more to them than I think, these are more for keeping data between accesses, so more of an individual logon thing rather than an overview of everything that is going on.

Notes:
With this solution (small table), you will probably need some maintenance script that collects and chucks out users who have stopped using the system but have forgotten to log out. Thus time of last access might be a useful thing to store. This is the type of thing that can get really complex, but you can keep it simple too.

I hope this helps.

I already know of a way to count the current sessions and get an online count that way, and it works. But because of that, I know there MUST be a way to do more with the sessions then count them (gather data to them) and I really want to know how you would go about doing that.

ksandom

How are you getting the count of the sessions?
I'll assume you know about getting data in and out of individual sessions. So what do you mean by

gather data to them

What's the code you are using to get the count of the sessions?

rapmonkey

Sorry, I meant gather data FROM them...

And here is the code:

<?php
function onlinecount(){ 

$count = 0;

   $handle = opendir(session_save_path("cache"));
    if ($handle == false) return -1;

while (($file = readdir($handle)) != false) {
    if (ereg("^sess", $file)) $count++;
}
closedir($handle);

   return $count;

}
onlinecount();
?>

Weedpacket

You realise that if you start trying to gather data from a pile of session data files then you're starting to use your filesystem for a database. A slow, clunky, inefficient database.

rapmonkey

Originally posted by Weedpacket
You realise that if you start trying to gather data from a pile of session data files then you're starting to use your filesystem for a database. A slow, clunky, inefficient database.

Then what is a better way to do it?