Question

Magento 1.6.

Within the login processing code, is it possible to find out when the user/customer has logged in for the very first time?

Answer 1

If your Magento is configured not to use double-opt-in (email confirmation) for customer registrations, then you can use what @PauGNU already posted:

$created_at = $customer->getCreatedAt();

But when it comes to double-opt-in, Magento creates the customer account immediately, i.e. setting created_at to the current system time, but does not activate it (so that customer cannot login before confirming) and only sends a confirmation mail.

This means an unkown delay (minutes, days, weeks, whatever) between created_at and the very first login, so created_at wouldn’t be of use anymore.

Actually, Magento has a place, where customer login times are being tracked by default: the table field log_customer.login_at, accessible by Mage_Log_Model_Customer, for example.

But, if you plan to use it:

• by default the class has no method to get the very first login. You’d need to develop that yourself.
• if “Log Cleaning” is active (to keep the database smaller), you’ll gonna lose the saved login times.

In that case, I’d prefer identifying the most proper event, hooking into it and saving only the very first login time per customer to a separate table.