Question

I have a mysql database that stores users that are online. Is there an efficient way of triggering an event after a time period to detect the users that are inactive (to set their status to “offline”)? I’m storing the last time the user was active in a table (TIMESTAMP value).

Thanks!

Answer 1

To run a php script regularly, you have many solutions :

• You use a cron job (this implies that you have a server). For learn to do this you can visit this link.
• You use the Event Scheduler provided by MySQL.
• If you not have server, you can use a provider who will launch your tasks regularly, the most known is Webcron.org (it’s not free).
• Other solution, you create a script PHP that will run in the background while waiting for the right time to perform an action ; for do that you must have access to function set_time_limit() and ignore_user_abort(). Then you create a script that loops continuously and checks for the moment whether there is something to do.