accessing all active sessions

devendraC

Hi,
In php I want to access name of currently login users.

Whenever a user logins I register its name as:-
$user=$_POST['user'];
session_register("login_user",$user);

My problem is how to access name of all currently login users.

Help Please.

Regards
Devendra

celibate54

I'm pretty sure this is not the most efficient way, but this is how I've been doing it:

when a user logs in, a session is started and variables are registered.

upon succesfful login i set a variable $onOrOff = to yes and insert that into the user database.

then to see "all current users"

i just call it from the database
SELECT * from <user database> WHERE onOrOff ="yes"

and when you LOG OFF I have it set $onOrOff to "no"

that'll work but it's not the most bandwidth efficient so I am curious to see what others have to say!

AstroTeg

Similar to celibate54's approach, but instead of using off/on, I use a timestamp field. The field is called something like "last on" and I update the time stamp whenever a user hits a page.

Then when I want to know how many users are online, I just check the table and query all those who have last been on since 10 minutes ago (you can change this to 5, 20, 60 minutes or whatever you like).

Since HTTP is a stateless protocol, someone could just walk away from the computer. How long do you want to wait before considering them "logged off?" How would you update the database after they walk away? These are kind of tricky problems to solve.

By using date and time, I can track whatever window I want (aka: 10 minutes) without worrying about the user having to log off. But the info is also handy for knowing when someone last visited a site. This can be handy for performance or stats measuring.

devendraC

Thanks guys for your prompt reply.

Regards
Devendra

celibate54

I'm still not quite familiar with how exactly date/time works in php. if i set a timestamp right now it'd store as 2004-05-04 8:37 or something close to it

how would i "add/subtract" time to find out the difference between 'login' time and when they should time out and/or find out how long they have been on, like '55 minutes' or 'X has been on 1 day 55 minutes '

Originally posted by AstroTeg
Similar to celibate54's approach, but instead of using off/on, I use a timestamp field. The field is called something like "last on" and I update the time stamp whenever a user hits a page.

Then when I want to know how many users are online, I just check the table and query all those who have last been on since 10 minutes ago (you can change this to 5, 20, 60 minutes or whatever you like).

Since HTTP is a stateless protocol, someone could just walk away from the computer. How long do you want to wait before considering them "logged off?" How would you update the database after they walk away? These are kind of tricky problems to solve.

By using date and time, I can track whatever window I want (aka: 10 minutes) without worrying about the user having to log off. But the info is also handy for knowing when someone last visited a site. This can be handy for performance or stats measuring.