user status?

deep

Hi!

Im wondering how to make my "is user online" function...
In my mind it looks very simple. When a user logs in a variable is set to 1 in the db and all other users can see that the user is online BUT... what happens if the user closes the window... the variable will still remain 1... so im guessing there is a better method of doing this on?

Or is there something that can check to see if the user left the site so that the variable can be turned back to 0?

Thanks!

AstroTeg

This isn't the only way to do it, but here's what I've done in the past...

For each page a user views, I update their last access time in a table.

Then when I want to show all the users online, I query that table for everyone who has had an access time within 10 minutes (you can change this to whatever you want).

Users who leave your site or walk away from their computer will no longer appear in the list after 10 minutes.

If you were looking for instant on/off status, that gets a bit more difficult and starts involving JavaScript (which as you know can be disabled).

deep

sounds like a good idea... only problem then would be that I got a chat attached to the site that checkes the users status. So I need to know exactelly when a user is online/offline... otherwise it could get confusing with the chat.

If its too complex, maybe you know a good script that i can have a look at instead of writing it all here? 🙂

Weedpacket

Originally posted by deep
So I need to know exactelly when a user is online/offline...

The problem is that http is a stateless protocol; the client makes a request, the server responds, and that's the end of it. The web server can't tell the difference between a client that's not sending requests because the user isn't doing anything at that moment and a client that's not sending requests because the user isn't looking at the site any more. To the sever they look exactly the same.

deep

ok, so then i heve to do like AstroTeg said, using time only?

AstroTeg

Its a tough problem and the way I did it probably isn't the only way to do it. It depends on how creative you are. As Weedpacket said, HTTP is a stateless protocol so you have to do some tricks to make what you're trying to do work.