Just for the sake of the argument I am going to assume that you want to implement something like the "Other Users" nodelet. There is really no good way to do this. You could make every user log in/out, but users are irresponsible, and would fail to logout.

The usual method is to log what time the user last accessed a page, and then when you need to generate a list of logged in users, you go through the log diplay only users that have logged in in the last N minutes.

If you had the times stored in a database you could do: 

SELECT username FROM users WHERE (last_access > $time)
$time would be the current time minus the "inactivity threshold".

--
IndyZ

In reply to Re: How do i know if an user is not on my site anymore?? by IndyZ
in thread How do i know if an user is not on my site anymore?? by pokemonk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.