Life of a Session

[doubledee]

Please refresh my memory...

 

What is the life of a Session?

 

If my script creates the following...

	$_SESSION['loggedIn'] = $loggedIn;

 

...then what is it when I close my browser window?

 

I believe it dies.

 

Is that true?

 

Is that *always* true?

 

 

Debbie

 

[Zane]

So long as you have session.cookie_lifetime = 0; in your php.ini file, then yeah, the browser will destroy the session.

[doubledee]

So long as you have session.cookie_lifetime = 0; in your php.ini file, then yeah, the browser will destroy the session.

 

How do I find out what that is on my VPS?

 

Is it in phpinfo() ?

 

Is there anyway to do that in my code?

 

 

Debbie

 

[Zane]

Is it in phpinfo() ?

Yes

[marcus]

print_r(session_get_cookie_params());

 

works as well.

[doubledee]

print_r(session_get_cookie_params());

 

works as well.

 

I am trying to find a way to update my database - without using JavaScript - if a User leaves my website by closing their browser.

 

Specifically, when someone reading an Article looks at those who have posted Comments, I don't want any Users who have closed their browsers to still appear as being "Online".

 

I was thinking one way to do this using PHP only would be to look for $_SESSION['loggedIn'] = $loggedIn; before I display who made Comments, and if $_SESSION['loggedIn'] =  then have my script update the database to mark the User as "Offline".

 

Would that work?!

 

 

Debbie

 

 

[doubledee]

Snap!  That wouldn't work because the script to display User Comments for User A wouldn't be able to see the Session Data for other Users, right?!

 

 

Debbie

 

 

[The Little Guy]

<?php 
// 7200 = Time in seconds for the cookie to be active; set to "0" for it to be active until the browser closes
// "/" = Where this cookie can access, currently set to root 
// ".site.com" = allow this cookie to access current domain and it's sub-domains; remove the first "." to only allow with in the domain and not subdomain
// FALSE = This cookie doesn't require a Secure Network 
session_set_cookie_params(7200,"/",".site.com",FALSE); 
session_start(); 
?>

[dannyb785]

That's why most sites have users as "recently online", where once they are logged in, viewing any webpage will update the user's "last_activity" value and the "Who's Online" box just shows the users who have a last_activity value within the last 5-10 minutes. Of course it doesn't account for someone who sits and reads one web page for 20 minutes, but there's no way to monitor idle activity(that I know of)

[The Little Guy]

but there's no way to monitor idle activity(that I know of)

 

ajax

[darkfreaks]

http://ajaxpatterns.org/Timeout

 

 

as to what little guy said it can be done in Ajax.

[doubledee]

That's why most sites have users as "recently online", where once they are logged in, viewing any webpage will update the user's "last_activity" value and the "Who's Online" box just shows the users who have a last_activity value within the last 5-10 minutes. Of course it doesn't account for someone who sits and reads one web page for 20 minutes, but there's no way to monitor idle activity(that I know of)

 

I'm determined to get the behavior I want without Ajax! 

 

How about this...

 

When I display User Comments, for each Poster I check the database to see if their "logged_in" field is set to "1" AND I also look at the "last_activity" field and compare that against the current system time().  If more than, say 4 hours, have passed, then I run an UPDATE on the User's record and change "logged_in" to "0" which would log the Poster out from an "Online/Offline" standpoint, but not log them out since that is dictated by their own personal SESSION.

 

I'm looking at my code, and I think this would work, except I don't know if it is possible with my Prepared Statements to run an UPDATE query inside this code...

// ********************************
// Display Comments on Article.		*
// ********************************
while (mysqli_stmt_fetch($stmt2)){
	// Set Photo Label.
	$photoLabel = (empty($photoLabel) ? $username : $photoLabel)

	echo '<div class="post">';

	// ********************
	// Display User Info.	*
	// ********************
	echo '	<div class="userInfo">
				<a href="#" class="username">
					<strong>' . nl2br(htmlentities($username, ENT_QUOTES)) . '</strong>
				</a>';

	if ($loggedIn==1){
		//<!-- Member Online -->
		echo '		<img src="/images/Light_Green_10.png" width="10"
						alt="Member Status: Online"
						title="Green Light.  Credit: Someone, Wikimedia Commons." />
					<br />';
	}else{
		//<!-- Member Offline -->
		echo '		<img src="/images/Light_Gray_10.png" width="10"
						alt="Member Status: Offline"
						title="Gray Light.  Credit: Someone, Wikimedia Commons." />
					<br />';
	}

 

Hope that makes sense?!

 

 

Debbie

[Zane]

check out onUnload and onBeforeUnload