Who's online hack?

Published by: wktd 2010-03-13

Hi!

Let me describe what I want to achieve.
I have a a link from inside my forum to a chatroom. There is a page, used as a portal, where people click on a link and the chat room loads in a new window.

People have complained that there are times that they click on the link, the java applet loads, they login just to find out that nobody's in the chat room. They asked of a way to verify if someone's already in there.

Since the chat is an external CGI script running on a different server, I know that you can't see who's using the script directly.

What I thought to approach the situation is this:

I'm thinking of a tracking system which logs which of the online forum members have clicked on the link that brings up the new window chat. Those members will be listed in the portal page so if someone goes there and see some people's names there's a good chance that these people are still inside. The names will be removed from the portal page as soon as the users have logged out.

I don't know how difficult this is to achieve (since I don't know any PHP) but my guess is that it requires the online tracking system built in vbulletin.

I think the general idea could be used for other applications too, so if anyone can think of something I'd like to know.

Thanks a lot in advance!

Thank you Wayne

Not even one idea guys?

It's possible but not vb or HTML friendly and would last only as long as the timeout UNLESS it is phpchat. If it's java based chat then it would be quite difficult and would require a few tweaks.

Chris is right, you can't code the instant that person closes the window UNLESS it is phpchat. When you are using an applet and after the user logs off, the server cannot detect online usage nor execute an sql process unless you use a metarefresh within a hidden/visible frame on the same page to keep the sql connection alive.

I'm not sure if you understand what I'm saying but I hope you understand what we were tryign to say.

There are several versions of a "Who is Online" hack in this forum. I was suggesting searching for "Who Is Online" and you would find what you need. I never assumed that you wanted a specific chat hack.

The who is online functionality will only work with vB 1.1.X and not 2.0 as it is. To get it into 2.0 will require some hacking.

Use the search. This is available in this very forum.

I'm aware of that "problem" chrispadfield, but if there's nothing better I can do, I'll have to endure it.

I've been through all the chat related threads already!

Let's say that my request has nothing to do with a chatroom.

Is there any way I can track when an online user clicks a link in my forum and make them appear in a list while they're still online?

wluke, if you're reffering to "integrating a chatroom with vB" kind of posts, I've seen them all but they don't contain what I want.

If you read carefully the description of my idea, you'll see what I mean.

integrating chatroom into vbulletin type posts is exactly what you want. That is the point, you have to be registered to use the page. In your case just make this an page about your chat room that contains the link to your chatroom. It would be much better if you could embed the java chat in that page but if this is not possible then what i have said is your best bet. Remember of course, that if someone just clicking a link is what you want to activate the tracking that after x minutes their session will time out and they may still be in chat or worse they may have left the chat room and there session is still valid saying they are there.