PHP calling JavaScript onUnload

mlewitz · November 30th, 2005, 09:53 PM

This seems so simple, but I can't figure it out. When someone visits my index.php page, I log the time they arrived with a simple PHP script. I want to simply log the time they exit or close the window, and write it to the same logfile. I can't figure out how to make this work.

I considered just calling the same scripting file again to just write the most current time into the same file, but I can't figure out how to make it run the script again. I'm strong with the JavaScript, but very weak with PHP.

Seems the onUnload command is my only hope, but JavaScript doesn't support PHP. I'm pretty sure PHP supports JavaScript, though.

Thanks for the input!
Mike L

richard.york · November 30th, 2005, 10:21 PM

onunload isn't reliable, in fact it may not finish executing before the page is unloaded. What you want is the onbeforeunload event, and at that, it probably won't be what you expect. It is intended as a last ditch effort to warn the user about saving something before exiting a document. It causes a confirmation dialogue to appear which cannot be circumvented. It was previously a MS propietary feature that has since been adopted by Mozilla Firefox, and Safari (I think). Not sure about Opera.

Regards,
Rich

--
[http://www.smilingsouls.net]
Mail_IMAP: A PHP/C-Client/PEAR solution for webmail
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mlewitz · November 30th, 2005, 11:08 PM

So, it sounds like your telling me my efforts are futile and I should get on with my life, huh?! :-|

Darn. Oh, well. Maybe somebody someday will invent something. It would be a VERY beneficial to many e-commerce sites- even just a simple innocent timestamp.

Thanks!!

fozzyuw · January 17th, 2006, 10:24 AM

This is a bit late, I know, as I only just now came to this forum on a random chance.

My suggestion is to do what Gmail does. Every one minute, save the current time. Then you can tell when the user left the website within 1 min. accuracy. If you need a greater or less accuracy, then just adjust the time interval.

To do this with PHP and Javascript you'll need to use the popular "AJAX" technique.

2 good sources for "AJAX" are.

http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/kassemi20050606.php3
http://www.pixel2life.com/twodded/t_...to_send_data_/

in quick Pseudo code it would look like thing like this.

PHP timeDBSave.php

Code:

   $Timestamp = $_REQUEST['timestamp'];

   $query = "INSERT INTO MyTable Timestamp = timestamp";
   executeQuery($query);

Code:

   Every x seconds
   {
      Execute_XMLHttpRequest(timeDBSave.php);
   }

Sorry, I don't have time to execute the pseudo code for the "AJAX" part, but you can easily check out the examples in the above two links to understand that.

Cheers,
Fozzy