I am creating a site on which content will be stored for several different magazines. Users will use a question and answer to gain access to the magazine.
Once they’ve been granted access, I would like them to continue to have access for a set period of time.
I’m thinking a database table could store cookie_id, issue_id and expiration. When a user accesses their first issue a cookie is stored on their computer containing a new, unique id. That unique ID, the issue id for the content they just accessed, and the expiration date get stored in the database.
If they access another issue, a new database entry is created but the cookie id is re-used.
When they return to the site the cookie is used to pull all related database entries and allow the user to re-visit any of those articles until they have expired.
Is there a smarter way of doing this?
Thank you in advance!
The problem with cookies is that they can be erased or corrupted (both unlikely but possible).
However, your solution is basically what I would do.
Here is what I would do…
when they login a cookie would be set with their userid (could be encrypted if desired). I wouldn’t use any conglomeration of dates/times/random values because these values most likely be different each time the user returns.
On subsequent pages check to see if the cookie id is set (possibly save a database query – if you don’t need to pull additional user info – and thus reduce load on the server).
I would use a database table and use their userid as the reference for further access to get previous issues read. If there are (or will be) a lot of users consider putting all info into one record in the database and inserting data in a specified format such as issue1:date1, issue2:date2, etc. this will only require 1 db query to update to add, update and/or delete entries.
However, for this I might seriously check into HTML5’s local storage solutions – I haven’t checked into using this yet or how well it is supported.