Question

How do I efficiently build a session timeout handler in PHP? I’m building a membership site where one logs in, I set a session variable that they have logged in successfully, and then start showing membership stuff when the session var for that says member = yes. Trouble is — session timeouts. Of course, I’m already setting the session timeout as far as I can on shared hosting, which is pretty decent, but this is for the case where someone walks away, reads a book or something, and tries to return to what they were doing.

I’d like to detect a session timeout and then redirect to a page that says, “Your session has timed out. Click here to login again.” They click to login again, and then get returned back to the page where they were.

Or something like that.

Answer 1

You could do that, but I don’t know if it would be worth the effort.

If you know the remainder time of the valid session, you could pass it to JavaScript, which could setTimeout() (if the number is small enough) or setInterval(). When the time is up, it could call window.location.reload().