Get Session Start Time And User Inactivity Period

If we are talking pure php, I dont think this can be done.

You can set a time in the session and then on the next request, get this time and calculate the difference between the two requests

Try this: https://laracasts.com/discuss/channels/laravel/laravel-using-sessions-storing-session-to-database

Save the session in your database and then query to see when it was set

Thanks @mushood, i understand that i could do this manually and override a lot of perfectly working controllers :) but i was hoping for a laravel way to do this, there is no need to reinvent the wheel.

if there is no other way then i will do this manually, i was convinced this could be done due to Session::getMetadataBag(); in older laravel versions but seems that session start time is only possible if your using database to store your sessions.

what about the user inactivity? how would you go about implementing it if you were to do it manually?

What does user inactivity mean for your project? Page open but not doing anything or did not do any valuable action on the site?

Also why use database to store your sessions? Any specific blocking issue?

@mushood no am not using database to store sessions, user in activity for my project would mean how long since last request.

@mushood thanks i think i have figured out how to solve my issue

@bobbyaxe61 Post your answer.

Someone else might have this issue and will find this when googling ;)

Mark it as solved as well

I solved this problem by creating a middleware that runs on every web request.

    // Declare a variable
    $user_active = false;

    // Check the users last request time
    if ($last_request_time = $request->session()->get('last_request_time')){
        if ($last_request_time + 3600 > time()) {
            $user_active = true;
            $request->session()->put('last_request_time', time());
        }
    } else {
        // if no request time assume user is from login process
        $request->session()->put('last_request_time', time());
    }

The code above checks if the user has made a request in the past one hour hence the number 3600secs. if user has made a request in the past one hour the user request time is updated. if not the $user_active will remain false. else if the user has no last_request_time key in his session assume user is from login process in and update user request time.