What best practices can be implemented to accurately track and manage session timeouts in PHP?

Session timeouts in PHP can be accurately tracked and managed by setting the session.gc_maxlifetime value in the php.ini file to the desired session timeout period in seconds. Additionally, developers can implement a custom session timeout handler to alert users before their session expires, giving them the option to extend their session. 

// Set the session timeout to 30 minutes (1800 seconds)
ini_set('session.gc_maxlifetime', 1800);

// Custom session timeout handler
function check_session_timeout() {
    if (isset($_SESSION['last_activity']) && time() - $_SESSION['last_activity'] > $_SESSION['timeout']) {
        // Session expired, destroy session and redirect to login page
        session_unset();
        session_destroy();
        header('Location: login.php');
        exit;
    } else {
        $_SESSION['last_activity'] = time();
    }
}

// Set session timeout and start session
session_start();

// Set session timeout period in seconds
$_SESSION['timeout'] = 1800; // 30 minutes

// Call the session timeout handler on every page load
check_session_timeout();

Keywords

session timeout PHP tracking management error handling

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