Showing users online/offline?

garrett01001

Whenever a user logs in the site updates the MySQL database to show that "user-A" is logged in and also gives a cookie to stay logged in.

I can make it show whos online.. My problem is of a similar nature though..

I have it set to whenever a user logs out, it gets rid of the cookie and updates the database so that "user-A" is now showing as OFFLINE.

The problem arises when people dont log out and therefor are still considered "online" for an unlimited amount of time.

The people using my site are very lazy and want to stay logged in for long periods of time, but I dont want it to show them online if they arent.. (like if they leave the site it shows them offline)

Is there anyway to update the database OnExit?

I looked into the OnExit thing for the body tag (in HTML) but I cant figure out how it could perform a PHP function. Everything I have seen using the OnExit thing calls a javascript function.

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

frost110

You could potentially track last_activity in the database. Whenever that is greater than 5 minutes they are considered offline.

Other than that you may be able to do something with javascript onunload function. I have seen this but yet to try it out.

To where when they close the page it sends a kill signal to like, check.php?user=bob&inactive=true or something similiar.

But as the same you need to make a DB call when that user connects back to the site to show he is online.

--FrosT

garrett01001

Hmm.. Checking last time active seems like a good idea!

Thanks alot!

treeleaf20

Would this need to be run in a CRON Job? Also what would the code look like to determine if there time is older then 5 minutes? Woudl running a CRON Job script every 5 minutes take up a lot of bandwidth and is this a smart way to do things?

garrett01001

I have no idea what a CRON job is.. but here is the code i used to make it work in PHP..

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM users WHERE active='yes'", $db);
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
	if($row['last_active_hour'] < date("H")) {
		mysql_query("UPDATE users SET active='no' WHERE user='".$row['user']."' LIMIT 1", $db);
	} elseif($row['last_active_minute'] + 5 <= date("i")) {
		mysql_query("UPDATE users SET active='no' WHERE user='".$row['user']."' LIMIT 1", $db);
	}
}

I have it update the last_active_minute and hour at the beginning of each page (if they are logged in) so the cookie might not have expired but it shows them as offline until they either log back in or refresh/visit a new page

treeleaf20

Your script would leave the values in the database. I would want to delete the actual row from the database, hence the CRON job. A CRON job runs at a specified time, so it's basically just a scheduler to run a designated script whenever you tell it to. In that script I would run a check on the table users_online and delete any rows that are older then 5 minutes. Is this the best way to do it?

garrett01001

Hmm.. My tables are set up differently.. The table that has the 'username', 'password' also has the 'last_active_hour/minute' and 'active' fields. So it cant delete the row or it will delete the user.. thats just how i set up mine..

mikey1090

each time they visit a logged in page inside your site, stamp the php time() into a filed in the database.

Then do

if current time-last time active >certain amount of seconds

set to offline

else online

thats what i use in my online game....