Knowing if user session is still "connected"

[BPetro]

Has anyone done work to keep a 'heartbeat' to know that a user is still around on the web site? I'm thinking I can popup a small window that can sit in the background or be useful for other purposes and have that window do automatic refreshes which get passed on to a database lastHeartbeatDateTime field. Each user is logged in so we know who 'owns' the session. A user would be considered 'connected' if their last 'heartbeat' was recent. It's not exact but it seems like a fair approximation to session control for a stateless session.

Any other ideas? Any better way? The big picture would be things like a display a list of co-members who are actively online. Any ideas of the best way to do this? Would anyone suggest some java applets or such instead?

Thanks!

 

[sedj]

A popup window would be considered intrusive. If I saw one trying to monitor my "activity" I would close the window and probably never visit the site again. Same for applets trying to do the same thing.
Stop trying to gather information on people !!!

You can achieve your "active logged in users" functionality by implementing a session listener and incrementing/decrementing a JVM static global int :

http://java.sun.com/webservices/docs/1.3/api/javax/servlet/http/HttpSessionListener.html

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[BPetro]

Wow! That sounds like what I wanted - thanks. PS: No I wasn't trying to gather anything about people. Just a way to let a group of people interact better. I'll read up on this as it looks like a good fit. Thanks Sedj