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[isedeasy]

I would like to add a feature to my site to show when a user was last active (exactally as you have here at PHP freaks). I would like to know the best way to go about this.

 

The method I came up with would be to simply update a value in a column in the users table every time a page is loaded. Now obviously this would work but I can't see it being very efficient as I am basically doing an mysql update every time a page loads.

 

What's the best way to go about this?

 

Thanks

[shlumph]

I'm not sure how else you'd be able to do it accurately. You could just track their last login, but that's not as precise.

[isedeasy]

yeah last login will not be very good at all because of the remember me feature.

 

The site uses memcache so maybe I could cache the last access time and run a cron job to delete the cache add update the database in the early morning?

 

or does that sound like a stupid idea

 

I don't want to decrease performance for a 'nice to have feature' but it would be nice to have that feature lol

 

will running an update query every page load put much strain on the server?

[Philip]

will running an update query every page load put much strain on the server?

 

As long as it is efficient, you won't have a problem.

 

Hell, look at the bottom of these pages... "Page created in 0.03 seconds with 29 queries.". Granted, the MySQL server is its own, but still...