Timeout after login but no logout

klatt

I am creating web based portal/payroll system and for right now I have created sessions which allow the user to login to the portal site. once in the portal site there are links to check in and check out of work.

I can insert this info into the database with a column type of datetime successfully.

The problem I have is what happens if the user does not logout out? We cannot have the people working for an indefinite amount of time...

I was thinking some time of auto logout flag but I do not know how I could get mysql or php to check it automatically at say 12 am etc or what user events would be good to use as a trigger to check...

TIA,
Frank

move3rd

Once a user closers their browser they are logged -out. Next time they go to your site a new session will be created and they will need to login again.

Usualy session files will be deleted on a regular basis without the need for you to do anthing (managed/shared servers). If you have your own server you can edit 'session.gc_maxlifetime'EDIT or 'session.cache_expire' in your php.ini.

klatt

Hey thanks for the reply!

The thing is, as I said in the first post, the user logs into the portal system (creates session) then from THERE the user checks into work and checks out. The reason it needs to be done this way is that workers will regularly access information mutliple times and from multiple locations...hence logging in and out and creating multiple sessions.

Basically, the check into work and out of work are separate from the sessions because of this.

move3rd

If your using a db to track logins and outs
you could put create a script that checks the datetime in the db and delete/logs out any users that logged in $x minutes ago
and trigger it from a script that is run serveral times a day but preverably not continualy.

This would mean you have to check the db to make sure the user is logged for every script within the 'work' area.

klatt

Yah I was thinking about doing that actually but I was wondering if there was any other way, a more concrete way, perhaps somehow scheduling a script to run at a certain time?

What if a user checks in and is the last one to work over a weekend..

Then the user doesnt get logged out until monday morning when somebody else logs in again.

klatt

Ive decided that I will have to use WinCron to schedule a script to run on the server which isnt what I wanted to do but seems the only way to do it.

Now I have to work on the logic to get this done. Any Ideas?

In my database I have a login field and a logout field and they are both date time and allowed null. Meaning when somebody logs in the date/time goes into that fiel and the logout field is null. Then the next record for that person should have a null for login and the date/time for the logout.

I know this is kind of sloppy database design...

As it is now I imagine I would have to query the database and match up login and logouts but it seems like there has to be a better way to do this.

Any Ideas?

TIA,
FRANK