Restful Authentication - which users are logged in

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi,

I'm using Restful Authentication plugin to provide credentials to users to my service.

I'd like to be able to list which users are logged into the system. What would be the best approach.

At least in the sessions controller I could add a flag for each user when they come and go but that means DB action and I'm not sure if that's the proper way.

I found this also: http://matt-beedle.com/2006/12/13/rails-how-to-find-out-who-is-online/

But I'd like to know your opinion about the best way.

Thanks.

2

Hi again,

I've been checking more about sessions and all that. I haven't checked every single detail of all possible ways but I think that cokies can be used, activeRecordStore, etc.

As said I'm using Restful authentication and that goes with cockies. Ok with me so far.

I've added a column to my users to store their status. I update it when they come and go. But of course users don't logout when the close their browsers. So I would register some actions when users browse the site, i.e. record the timestamps.

After doing that I would use a script runner to see if the last activity was for example 30 minutes ago, if so then I would update their status to logged out.

Do you think that makes sense?

3

Hi, I also found another tutorial where basically was updating a status flag for each user.

In that direction (storing each user’s last_visit time in the User model) :

http://pastie.caboo.se/162861

remark: it only counts the logged-in users.

4

Great so that's another example. Thanks.

In the end I actually decided to use active record store and it is going pretty well. But I have some questions about and I'll start a new topic about sessions cleanup and avoiding duplication.

Cheers