Question

I have an array with user information and a web service on a site I can query for the status of a user (online/offline). What I would like to do is query the site every x seconds for the status of each user.

There are about 10 users and belwois an example of the array. I can change the array is needed. Only thing I need to enter manually is the username and full name. The “status” I can call from the server.

$users = array
(  
  "username"=>array("Fullname","Status"),  
  "johndoe"=>array("John Doe","Online"),
  "janedoe"=>array("Jane Doe","Offline")
);

This is an example of the url I can use to query the site (the query returns only the users status (Online or Offline):
http://thesite.com:80/webservice/user/username/

This is the code I can use to get a specific user status:

$url = 'http://thesite.com:80/webservice/user/johndoe/';
$get = fopen($url, "r");
if ($get) {
    while (!feof($get)) {
        $state = fgets($get, 4096);
    }
    fclose($get);
}

echo "User johndoe is: ".$status;
// Output: User johndoe is: Online

Now I only need help with iterating through the users and site every x seconds and update the array with each user status in the last array field for the user.

Please note that below I use php and fopen as this is a cross-domain get function and I could not get ajax/jquery to work. I do not have the option to modify the webservice server.

Thanks 🙂

Answer 1

If your $users array don’t changes, you can do this:

foreach($users as $username=>$userdata) {
    $url = 'http://thesite.com:80/webservice/user/'.$username.'/';
    $get = fopen($url, "r");
    if ($get) {
        while (!feof($get)) {
            $state = fgets($get, 4096);
        }
        fclose($get);
    }
    $users[$username][1] = $state;
}

If you can change your $users array to be associative like this:

$users = array(  
    "username"=>array("fullname"=>"Fullname","status"=>"Status"),  
    "johndoe"=>array("fullname"=>"John Doe","status"=>"Online"),
    "janedoe"=>array("fullname"=>"Jane Doe","status"=>"Offline")
);

That would let you use more key/values and a bit safer.