Article Discussion: The Quickest Way To Count Users Online With PHP

The Quickest Way To Count Users Online With PHP If you have any comments or questions about this article then please post them here.

You can read the article here .

I would suggest using if(is_file($Fil)) instead of the method in the article becuase the way shown, I have add some errors. Over all the I thought the article was great!

greeting,

got some errors

my getOnlineUsers.php


my index.php

What error messages are you receiving?

Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_ELSE in e:\homepage\shapik\vthree.0\getOnlineUsers.php on line 24

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: getonlineusers() in e:\homepage\shapik\vthree.0\index.php on line 12

You're missing a closing brace "}" in your getOnlineUsers() function. I would suggest indenting your code, this way you can find errors like this more easily. It provides easier readability.

Try that.

hey everbody! i'm new here and i was testing this script out and aready solved the missing bracket problem, but now i run into a new problem and where it supposed to say "users online: "
it says

Warning: open_basedir restriction in effect. File is in wrong directory in /mnt/host-users/cumnut/index.php on line 10
users online:

any help?

this means that your having problems with setting the session data i think?? does your server allow sessions to be used?

how do i find out if my server allows sessions?
i tried using phpinfo()

and said phpinfo() was dispabled for security reasons...

sounds like its running in safe mode maybe?

is their any way i can change that?

well that depends if you have administrator rights to the actual web server? If your using a hosted web server, your got bugger all chance.

However, things will lookup if your running your own server

look for "safe_mode" (without the quotes) in your php.ini file, and make sure that its set to "Off" (again without the quotes)

save it, and restart the server.

i'm hosted!! well, worth a try anywayz....
maybe i'll change the host...

Hi, first of all I'm sorry for my poor English.
The method described in the article is as great as simple but I would never suggest anybody to save sessions in files in a very busy site. In this case, as far as I know, it would be better saving sessions in dbm files or in a database.
Have you ever tried, by any chance, to use your method on a dbm files based session system and count the keys instead of files?

Hey, dont know if anyone else has run into this problem, but fileatime() does not return the access TIME of the files on a Windows platform, only the date.

Not sure if there is a work around for this.

Any ideas?

I have already edited the script some what to only count session files that have certain values within them, so as to only count session files of registered members

goes like this :




Wonder if adding a "last accessed date" to the session everytime it is accessed then pulling it out with any other values as above would solve this problem, or if it would slow everything down.

Any help welcome.

Thanks

lol..

Nevermind, created a work around.

Just incase anyone else needs it...

everytime you start the session:



then the script itself:



I know its not commented, but i'm sure you can work it out yourself, besides, I doubt anyone is going to read this

hi everybody!
Mr author you have written a really usefull article but it has so many bugs!
plz correct this as soon as possible ...
thanx again

hi everybody!
Mr author you have eritten a really usefull article but it has so many bugs!
plz correct this as soon as possible ...
thanx again

Does anybody know what the problem may be, if my $file only contains a ”.”

i'm having problems as well, but i dont know if it is really the author's code that

my counter always shows too many users online.
whenever i switch to another page the counter adds about 20 hits or so. why? isnt it the same session?
is there an increasement whenever i make session_start(); ???

i'm new to sessions , pardon!
and i want to show how many users are online on the whole website. nobody but me can be online cause it is a restricted testarea, but it shows about 100 users.

thanks for any hint!!!!!
sascha

I used this code and i still get 0 users online, i checked my error and nothing, but i have to change my saves seesion path to /tmp/ casue i got an error of /tmpsess.2345678uygfcfgh file not found, so when i changed my path i still get 0 users on line

I don't like leaving negative feedback, but I've wasted hours on this bit of code and I still get a user count of zero, which I know to be wrong. I really think the author should have made sure the correct number of brackets were on the page and it's been commented on enough in this discussion, which is where I eventually worked out where it should go.

Why ask for a discussion on the article if the author doesn't read it?

Actually, it was the author how is missing a closing brace.

While in theory this was a good article, in practice, I am quite disappointed that it wasn't tested enough to find a missing brace!

I had to give this one star. If you are writing an article, at least test it, please.

Here is the script with the { problem fixed.

Adding this line at the end:
echoing session_save_path(); out shows it is in the proper directory.

The solution for Linux is to change this line:
if(time()- fileatime(session_save_path() . '\\' . $file) < MAX_IDLE_TIME * 60) {

to this:
if(time()- fileatime(session_save_path() . '/' . $file) < MAX_IDLE_TIME * 60) {



<?php
/* Start the session */
session_start();

/* Define how long the maximum amount of time the session can be inactive. */
define("MAX_IDLE_TIME", 3);

function getOnlineUsers(){

if ( $directory_handle = opendir( session_save_path() ) ) {
$count = 0;
while ( false !== ( $file = readdir( $directory_handle ) ) ) {
if($file != '.' && $file != '..'){
// Comment the 'if(...){' and '}' lines if you get a significant amount of traffic
if(time()- fileatime(session_save_path() . '\\' . $file) < MAX_IDLE_TIME * 60) {
$count++;
}
}
}
closedir($directory_handle);
return $count;

} else {
return false;
}

}
?>