Best way to detect when a user leaves a web page?

Question

What is the best way to detect if a user leaves a web page?

The onunload JavaScript event doesn\'t work every time (the HTTP request takes longer than t

Answer 1

Thanks to Service Workers, it is possible to implement a solution similar to Adam's purely on the client-side, granted the browser supports it. Just circumvent heartbeat requests:

// The delay should be longer than the heartbeat by a significant enough amount that there won't be false positives
const liveTimeoutDelay = 10000
let liveTimeout = null

global.self.addEventListener('fetch', event => {
  clearTimeout(liveTimeout)
  liveTimeout = setTimeout(() => {
    console.log('User left page')
    // handle page leave
  }, liveTimeoutDelay)
  // Forward any events except for hearbeat events
  if (event.request.url.endsWith('/heartbeat')) {
    event.respondWith(
      new global.Response('Still here')
    )
  }
})