How to detect if a user has logged out, in php?

Question

After the user successfully logs in, I store login = true in database. But how do I check if the user logged out by closing the browser without clicking the logout button? A

Answer 1

You are wondering if you can detect if a user closed his browser. You kinda can with javascript but I would not rely on it (since javascript is easy to disable) But you can not with PHP, since PHP only runs when you are requesting a page. Not when the page is open.

To be safe you should track the user's last activity and if it's past a few minutes (5/10) then assume that user is gone. If he does something again though (after 6 minutes for example) then he's back online.