Timed Unlock

[liboration77]

I am making a login script that locks a user account for 15 minutes if someone fails to login correctly after 5 attempts. It works, however, I do not know how to unlock it 15 minutes later.

My original thought would be to store in the database the time at which the account was locked. Then everytime someone tried to log into the locked account it would check to see if the current time is 15 minutes or more past the time at which the account was locked.

My problem is I have no idea on how to successfully compare two times like this. Any ideas?

[.josh]

convert it to unix timestamp format and just do a regular comparison. look at the mktime function

[Orio]

Your idea is great. When you "lock" a user enter the current timestamp (by simply using the returned value from the function [url=http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.time.php]time()[/url]) into the database.
Then, in every log in attempt check if the current timestamp (run time() again :)) minus the timestamp in the database is greater than 15*60 (15minutes * 60 seconds). If it is, let the user log in. If it's less that means the 15 minutes of "locking time" haven't passed yet :)

Orio.