Displaying Online Users

cyberrate

Hello!

I'm working on online community project, i managed the authorization, now i need to display online users, well every user has his session which are active or inactive but how to display it on PHP page?

Thank you.

AstroTeg

Keep track of the session in the database. Use a timestamp field (or date/time - whichever you prefer) and update the time in the DB every time they hit a page. Then its a matter of querying the table for all users within a certain time frame (say 10 minutes or so).

batman

Another possible way is to make a field in the table called active. Set the this fields default value to 0 then when someone logs in, it will update that field to increment by 1.



$sql = mysql("SELECT active from table");
$result = mysql_fetch_array($sql);
$number = $result['number'];

//if login is successful

$new = $number++

$update = mysql("UPDATE table SET(number) VALUES('$new')");

If you have someone log off just do the oposite.

Then where ever you want to display the number of users online then just do another query on that page and echo out the number. This sounds confusing but it really isn't.

Let me know what you think,

AstroTeg

Batman, how do you handle situations when the user walks away from the computer never to return?

batman

First of all even if the person is not there they WILL still be logged in therefore being still an online user. They will continue to stay an online user until they logoff and in order to do so they HAVE to come back. Secondly if someone logs into something that usually means they want / need to do something. Why would someone just "walk away and never return" if they are logged in?

Also, it's not like he needs to take exactly what I said, remember this board is just to help. If he wants he can make it automatically log them off if unactive for X minutes, resulting in an updated number of online users.