Displaying users online

[shane1090]

Hi, i'm trying to create a script that will show all the users that are currently online on my site. However, i want it to show all users with their username, then have a total number of users somewhere on the page. All the user data is in a mysql database.

I'm really unsure on how to go about this, so anyhelp would be appreciated.

Thanks

[dalecosp]

Set up a table of current logins: username, remote address, a time stamp. Bump the TS each time a page is loaded from that address with that username in the session array.

Your user list will be everyone in the "current login" table whose last timestamp is greater than time()-3600 or so....

[shane1090]

what i have done now is created an include on every page that puts the time stamp into the users table under a column called 'online'

With the actual page that shows it, i did an sql search that look for users with the 'online' value less than time() - 300, will this work effectively?

[dalecosp]

My motto: if it works, I can tell ...

hope you can, too 😃

[bike5]

You could also add a field to the database that is updated to 1 when the user logs in and updated to 0 when they log out. Now, if they leave without logging out, you still will be using the time() - 300 to check for recent activity. This would make it a tad more accurate because if a user logs out and it updates their field to 0, then your test to see if they are online will see it is 0 so they are not online and you won't have the time delay problem. Because without using this extra step, it would show that that user is still online time() - 300 after they leave the site. Even if they bypass my extra step by not signing off, they still get checked by the time() - 300 and everything is back to how it was.. Just an idea.