[Resolved] HOw to see that a user is online or not?

TheBeginner

Have ssen on several forums, dating sites and so on a function where you can see if another member is online or not. How to implement it in the code? Store and check the different sessioncookies ot how? Please give me a hint how this is done in all the different forums and dating sites!

bradgrafelman

Well, you could create a field in MySQL called.. "last_action" lets say. Store the last unix timestamp that the user did anything on the forum/site/whatever in that field.

Then, define what "online" means. Visited in the last 10 minutes? 5 minutes? Just compare the unix timestamp from the MySQL field with 5 minutes ago like:

$last_action = time(); // pretend right now is their last action
if((time() - $last_action) <= 300) { // 300 = 5 minutes (60 secs * 5 mins)
$online_list .= ", $username";
}

The above script used examples, but that should give you the basic idea.

TheBeginner

Seems like it is a little bit uncertain do it this way or. You have to then define a time, and even if the user is inactive he/she could be still logged in.

Is it posible to store sessinID when the user log in with his userID and then check if the sessionID excist everytime his name is shown on the site/forum? I don't know if it is possible, just asking. All the different forums do it someway so it shoudn't be so hard....

Drakla

Tracking session id's wouldn't help at all as they have a lifetime of 24 minutes on a standard setup before they're junked (which is reset everytime the user visits a new page). The suggestion before of keeping a db table with timestamps is pretty much standard. And remember browsing sites is connectionless so you're never really actively plugged in for more than the time it takes a page to load.

bradgrafelman

Right. The timestamp updating is the only thing that came to my mind.

On every page, you'd just run a quick query like so:

$query = mysql_query("UPDATE users SET last_action = UNIX_TIMESTAMP() WHERE username='$username'");

etc.

TheBeginner

I will try that. Thanks! Really glad to have seen an option how to implement it!