Confused on Last login time script

[sks1024]

I have a login script that check a DB for username and password and logs the user in. I want to add the last login time to the sript as well.

I have a control panel as the first page that the user sees upon login and the other pages have alonk to return to control panel page.

Everytime the users return to the control panel page the update the login time script gets execued again and overwrites the last login time info in the DB.

How can I get this part to only exeute once during this seeesion the user is logged in.

<?php
session_start();

if ((!$username) && (!$password)) {
header("Location: /npi/index.php?error=5");
exit;
}elseif(!$username) {
header("Location: /npi/index.php?error=3");
exit;
}elseif (!$password) {
header("Location: /npi/index.php?error=4");
exit;
}else{
$Host = "localhost";
$User = "****";
$Password = "****";
$DBName = "****";
$thedate = date("F j, Y g:i a");

$Link = mysql_connect ($Host, $User, $Password) or die ("The database connection could not be established!");
$query = "SELECT * from health_login where username='$username' AND password='$password'";
$result = mysql_db_query($DBName, $query, $Link) or die("Could not complete database query");
$total = mysql_num_rows($result);
}
if ($total == 1){
$username = "$username";
$password = "$password";

session_register('username');
session_register('password');

$query3 = "UPDATE health_login SET last_login = '$thedate' WHERE username = '$username'";
$result = mysql_db_query($DBName, $query3, $Link) or die("Could not complete database query");

}
?>

Thanks,
Stan

[devinemke]

4 things:

1. in the login script, once a user is successfully logged in create a session var called "login_time" or something that stores the current date/time (or timestamp). then add some conditional logic that only updates the "last_login" field if that session var is not set.

2. do not use [man]session_register[/man]. that function is depreciated. just add indexes directly to the $_SESSION array.

3. you appear to be storing the date/time as a string (VARCHAR). don't do that. use one of mySQL native Date and Time Types.

4. these lines in your script are completely useless:

   $username = "$username"; 
   $password = "$password"; 
   

[sks1024]

ok i think i have it all but one part.

how to i struture my update query using the mysql column type of datetime.

$query3 = "UPDATE health_login SET last_login = '0' WHERE username = '$username'";

What would i put where the '0' is in my example for this type of data.

Stan

[devinemke]

$query3 = "UPDATE health_login SET last_login = NOW() WHERE username = '$username'";