What role does JavaScript play in managing user sessions and online status in a PHP forum?

JavaScript can be used to periodically send requests to the server to update the user's online status in the PHP forum. This can be achieved by sending AJAX requests to a PHP script that updates the user's last activity timestamp in the database. By regularly updating this timestamp, the forum can track when the user was last active and determine their online status. 

// PHP code snippet to update user's last activity timestamp
// This code should be called by an AJAX request from a JavaScript function

// Start session
session_start();

// Update user's last activity timestamp in the database
if(isset($_SESSION['user_id'])){
    $user_id = $_SESSION['user_id'];
    
    // Connect to database
    $conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);
    
    // Check connection
    if ($conn->connect_error) {
        die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
    }
    
    // Update user's last activity timestamp
    $sql = "UPDATE users SET last_activity = NOW() WHERE user_id = $user_id";
    $conn->query($sql);
    
    // Close connection
    $conn->close();
}

Keywords

JavaScript user sessions online status PHP forum managing

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