How can PHP be used to display online users in a forum setting?

To display online users in a forum setting using PHP, you can store user activity in a database with timestamps and then query the database to retrieve users who have been active within a certain timeframe (e.g. last 5 minutes). You can then display these users on the forum page to show who is currently online. 

// Assuming you have a database connection established

// Query the database to retrieve users active within the last 5 minutes
$current_time = time();
$active_users_query = "SELECT username FROM user_activity WHERE last_active > ($current_time - 300)";
$result = mysqli_query($conn, $active_users_query);

// Display the online users
echo "Online Users: ";
while($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    echo $row['username'] . ", ";
}

Keywords

PHP online users forum display session tracking

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