Tryangled Dev

Php in most cases uses files to store session data. In general those files are stored in the /tmp directory (for unix based servers) and this is defined in the session.save_path php.ini directive.

To do this we will first need to create a directory which will hold the files. The important thing on this is to know the directory path in the filesystem. So if the directory is under our home dir, then we will need to know the path /usr/home/sessions This directory should have write permissions, so to be sure you can chmod it to 755.

Now we need to change some php directives in order to make this work. If your host provides you with a php.ini file for your site, then you should open it and edit it as follows:

Code:
session.save_handler = “files”
session.save_path = “/usr/home/sessions/”
session.auto_start = 1

If php.ini is not an option, then you can create (or edit) an .htaccess file in your web root (document root) and add the following:

Code:
php_value session.save_handler files
php_value session.save_path /usr/home/sessions/
php_value session.auto_start 1

Finally there is a third way to achieve this. Open a php file that is included in your whole web site, and add these lines in the beginning :

Code:
<?php
ini_set(’session.save_handler’, ‘files’);
ini_set(’session.save_path’, ‘/usr/home/sessions/’);
ini_set(’session.auto_start’, 1);
?>

Now that your site has each own session directory, you can easily get the number of online visitors by using something like this :

Code:
<?php
echo ((int)count(explode(”\n”,shell_exec(’ls /usr/home/sessions’)))) . ‘ users online’;
?>

This entry was posted on Friday, February 29th, 2008 at 1:02 pm and is filed under General, PHP Programming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.