What are the considerations when managing user sessions and tracking online status in PHP applications?

When managing user sessions and tracking online status in PHP applications, it is important to set session variables to track user activity and update them regularly to determine if a user is online or not. This can be achieved by updating a timestamp in the session data each time a user interacts with the application. By checking this timestamp against the current time, you can determine if a user is still active. 

// Start or resume a session
session_start();

// Update user's last activity timestamp
$_SESSION['last_activity'] = time();

// Check if user is online based on last activity timestamp
$online_threshold = 60; // User is considered online if they have interacted with the application in the last 60 seconds
$user_is_online = (isset($_SESSION['last_activity']) && (time() - $_SESSION['last_activity'] <= $online_threshold));

if($user_is_online){
    echo "User is online";
} else {
    echo "User is offline";
}

Keywords

Session management user tracking online status PHP applications security vulnerabilities

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