What are common methods for checking online status in PHP applications?

To check the online status of users in PHP applications, a common method is to track the last activity time of users and compare it to a predefined threshold to determine if they are currently online. This can be achieved by updating a timestamp in the database whenever a user performs an action on the site and then querying this timestamp to determine if the user is considered online. 

// Update user's last activity time in the database
function updateLastActivityTime($userId) {
    // Update the last activity time for the user with $userId in the database
}

// Check if a user is online based on last activity time
function isUserOnline($userId, $threshold = 300) { // 300 seconds (5 minutes) threshold
    // Get the last activity time for the user with $userId from the database
    $lastActivityTime = // Retrieve last activity time from the database

    // Calculate the time difference between current time and last activity time
    $currentTime = time();
    $timeDifference = $currentTime - strtotime($lastActivityTime);

    // Return true if user is considered online based on threshold, false otherwise
    return ($timeDifference <= $threshold);
}

Keywords

PHP online status checking methods applications

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