Who's Online?

[d-woo]

I have an admin area (password only) where only I and only one other person has access.

How can I determine when they are on-line without using sessions and a database. This person has a dial-up access, so the IP is always changing.

I'd like to have a one-liner at the top of the page saying "John is on-line".

I can do this with a log-in using sessions and a database, but would like to do it without. Is this possible?

[bretticus]

well, you could use a cookie I suppose, but he can deny,block,or erase them. By the way, I take it you're not using a database to login to the admin area? Sounds liek you may be using .htaccess with one username and password.

The only way you can really (or should) recognize a user when they log on is via personal username password.

If using .htaccess you can use: $PHP_AUTH_USER and $PHP_AUTH_PW to get the neccessary information. If you create another username and password for the directory that is.

check out:
http://www.php.net/manual/fi/features.http-auth.php

Derrick wrote:

I have an admin area (password only) where only I and only one other person has access.

How can I determine when they are on-line without using sessions and a database. This person has a dial-up access, so the IP is always changing.

I'd like to have a one-liner at the top of the page saying "John is on-line".

I can do this with a log-in using sessions and a database, but would like to do it without. Is this possible?

[kailien]

if you are using .htaccess, use this variable:

$REMOTE_USER

this is a variable defined in Apache.

thus, if the username = john and when he types that in the pop-up log-in box, $REMOTE_USER will contain john, ie

$REMOTE_USER = john,

then, you could use php to echo $REMOTE_USER to show that value without session, cookie, etc.

[d-woo]

This is exactly what I was looking for!!

Thanks Kai.

One more question...

How long does the $REMOTE_USER hold the value after the person logs off.

I've tested it...it works great when John logs in. When he logs out, it still says that he's on-line.

Does anyone know how to reset this after the $Remote_User logs off or is it set in the browser's cache?

I tested this with MSIE 5.0 and 5.5.

Thanks.