locking files for editing

[ucbones]

Hi,

I've cunningly added a field called 'editing' in my MySQL dbase to lock a row for editing when someone else is editing it. If the person starts editing it (in my CMS), the value of 'editing' changes to 1, and anyone else attempting to edit it is given an error message. Once they've completed the edit, 'editing' is reset to 0, opening it up for editing. My question is, how do I stop people closing the browser window, and hence, skipping the update editing field, and therefore locking that row for editing forever? I'm guessing I need to something in window.onClose, but maybe there's a better way- any ideas?

D

[RonR]

You could let the lock expire, instead of setting the editing field to 1, make it a timestamp and set it to the time of locking... editing is now allowed if editing = 0 OR if editing < currenttimestamp-expiretime.