The best way to track a user's online status

@Snapey At least the whole Google is filled with such an implementation :)

At a minimum, you can also check for the existence of the cache, then you will not need to write data to the database with each request

But this is what interests me, so I ask knowledgeable people

@Snapey I would like to just store the time when the last activity was made and it doesn't matter that this data is accurate to the second: it can be up to 5 minutes I will check the online status using the cache

Therefore, now my option is to use a middleware that checks for the presence of a cache, if it is not there, then I update the data in the database, if it is, then we just move on. Online status will be cached for 5 minutes

Like that:

middleware:

 if (Auth::check() && !Cache::has('user-is-online-' . Auth::user()->id)) {
            $expiresAt = Carbon::now()->addMinutes(5); // keep online for 5 min
            Cache::put('user-is-online-' . Auth::user()->id, true, $expiresAt);
            User::where('id', Auth::user()->id)->update(['last_seen' => now()]);
        }

model:

public function isOnline() {
		return Cache::has('user-is-online-' . Auth::user()->id);
}

How do you like this approach?

@deekepMaks whats the point of the model code. The only person that can see it is the authenticated user, who is obviously on-line

@Snapey You’re right, I was wrong.

But if I need to get a list of users who are online, I can just extract those who have now - last_seen < 5 min. Is it problematic?

@deekepMaks which is why I said use an array in cache

@Snapey Do you suggest writing each user request to an array in the cache? And then, with a difference in some time, use the last record of the array to update last_seen in the database?

Okay, what is the difference to add an additional condition to check the existence of the cache in middleware, which I wrote about above?

@deekepMaks no

write key of user->id and value of timestamp into the cache, overwriting any value already there

if you put these key => value pairs into an array, then you can get the whole array and iterate over it to see who is online

To be clear, each user would have only one entry in the array in cache

@Snapey Okay, I have an entry in the cache of type users-online and it contains an array of user ids I am interested in the following questions:

1. Let's say that I have a huge number of users online on my site. To check if an entry is in the cache, I need to fetch the entire array and check for the existence of the key. Wouldn't such an operation on a huge array be too time consuming in php itself?
2. How do I remove from the array of users who have left online? If this was a unique user-online-{id} entry, it would have deleted itself after a while, what to do here?

@Snapey Is it possible to immediately get the desired array element from the cache without taking out the entire array? Or do you mean that I need to get the entire array and check the existence of the record as array[key]? Okay, why is the array small? There can be a lot of users who are online

@deekepMaks Bro 👊 , He already told you.

Here:

1. Use cache to store the user online. How ?

• We need to store cache of user in every request.

• Make global middleware to store it
• Make Cronjob to remove offline user from cache in every #your_time

// example of user data that we have to store in cache
// $arr = [
//     user_id_1 : timestamp,
//     user_id_2 : timestamp,
//     user_id_3 : timestamp,
// ]

// 1. in middleware
$getOldOrNewCached = Cache::has('online-user') ? Cache::get('online-user') : [];

// check if exist user in cached
if(array_key_exists(auth()->id , $getOldOrNewCached)){
    $getOldOrNewCached[auth()->id] = now();
} else {
    array_push($getOldOrNewCached, [auth()->id => now()]);
}
Cache::put('online-user', $getOldOrNewCached); 

// 2. make cronjob or schedule task in laravel to check user active or not in every 5min for example
$getOldOrNewCached = Cache::has('online-user') ? Cache::get('online-user') : [];
$ActiveUser = [];
if(count($getOldOrNewCached) > 0){
    // user inactive for example is user stop browing your website or system in 5min and let find it.
    foreach ($getOldOrNewCached as $key => $value) {
        // we got only online user
        if(now() <= $value + 300){ // 300s = 5min
            array_push($ActiveUser, [$getOldOrNewCached[$key] => now()]);
        }
    }
    Cache::put('online-user', $ActiveUser); 
}

// 3. in your page to get all users who is online
$getOnlineUser =  Cache::get('online-user');
///loop it
// ...
// ...
// ...