Who is logged in?

[Sigrist]

Customers of our web application www.promatainer.com have asked me to add the functionality to display the names of the users that are currently logged into the the application.

I have tried several approaches without success. The application is written in A5 V10.5. Is there a solution to add this functionality in our web application?

Andy Sigrist

[Steve Wood]

Re: Who is logged in?

It is pretty easy to collect who has (recently) logged in, but not who is currently logged in. To get who has logged in, put something like this on your Login.a5w page:

If eval_valid("submitbutton")
' code to store the userid to a table along with timestamp
' "userid" is a real variable name that will hold what the user entered in the Username Login Dialog field.
end if

That tells you who logged in, and when. If you could mandate that they click your logout button to end their session, you could assume that everyone that logged in, but has not logged out, is current. But a large percentage will just close their browser. So you can put code on your logout.a5w page to delete them from the above table (or flag them as logged out), but you can also check for 'recent activity' to see if they are still logged in.

A normal user will refresh pages and run some routines. Pick a few important ones and add some code that updates the above table to indicate they are 'still logged in' by updating the timestamp. You could guess that anyone with a timestamp older than XX hours is no longer logged in.

[Sigrist]

Re: Who is logged in?

Steve,

thank you for your help with this. I will add the code to the Login.A5w page and incorporate some of your other suggestions. At the same time I am surprised that it is not easy to display "who is logged in". I thought that this would be a common request from users of Alpha 5 applications and that Alpha Software would have provided a function for this. Maybe it will come in a future release.

Andy Sigrist

[Peter.Greulich]

Re: Who is logged in?

At the same time I am surprised that it is not easy to display "who is logged in". I thought that this would be a common request from users of Alpha 5 applications and that Alpha Software would have provided a function for this. Maybe it will come in a future release.

Alpha web security configuration has a check box to track who logs in & out. It sends the data to a text file on your server. It also gives you the option to send the results to a custom UDF to do whatever you want. Of course, as Steve says, there is no way to know if a user is still logged in (unless they actually logged out), if their session has expired, if they closed the browser window, if they took a sledge hammer to their computer, or if they jumped out of their apartment window. That's not an Alpha limitation, that's a web browser "feature".

[Steve Wood]

Re: Who is logged in?

Peter - I forgot about that checkbox. I think Alpha is not going to enhance the security model since they are eventually going to an IIS model and that would obviate all of the security framework methods.

[Peter.Greulich]

Re: Who is logged in?

...and that would obviate all of the security framework methods.

RATZ!!!

[Sigrist]

Re: Who is logged in?

Appreciate all your help and feedback. Thank you for the detailed explanations.

Andy

[Sigrist]

Re: Who is logged in?

Ok, I am still struggling to implement the suggestion

If eval_valid("submitbutton")
' code to store the userid to a table along with timestamp
' "userid" is a real variable name that will hold what the user entered in the Username Login Dialog field.
end if

I did put it into the Login.A5w page. Couple of questions:

To populate the Userid field, is there a system variable that I can access that holds the User ID?
Do I need to sbustitute a different name or variable for "submitbutton"?

Ideally, is there an application example where I can see this implemented? This would help me the most.

Appreciate all help on this.

Andy

[Peter.Greulich]

Re: Who is logged in?

Steve's code will work. userid is Alpha's variable name in the login dialog component. submitbutton refers to the login button itself when clicked.

[Sigrist]

Re: Who is logged in?

Peter,

thank you for your help. I think I am almost there, but appreciate if you can review what I have done so far and let me know what I am doing wrong.

- I created a file Web_Log.dbf. (attached Picture 1)
- On the Login.A5w page, I added Xbasic code (attached Picture 2)

The actual text of the XBasic code is shown below:

if eval_valid("submitbutton")
tbl = table.open("Web_Log")
tbl.enter_begin()
tbl.Userlogin = userid
tbl.Logindate = Date()
tbl.logintime = Time()
tbl.enter_end()
tbl.close()
end if

Two problems remain. First, the If condition does never execute. Second, the variable "userid" is not recognized.

Sincerely

Andy Sigrist

A5 Screen Print.jpgA5 Screen Print 1.jpg

[Steve Wood]

Re: Who is logged in?

You first need to confirm that the IF statement is true. Put something like save_to_file("got here","c:\test.txt") inside the IF statement to see if you get a file. Your second line should be tbl = table.open("[PathAlias.ADB_Path]\Web_Log") and your table field type to store the Time value is incorrect.

[Peter.Greulich]

Re: Who is logged in?

Are you using Alpha's login component or did you hand create your own?

[Sigrist]

Re: Who is logged in?

Steve, Peter,

thank you for all your help with this. I tried the suggestions today - without positive results - and here is my feedback:

[LIST][*]The login component is Alpha's login component. See attached picture.[*]The IF statement does not work. It does not apprear to detect the submitbutton. The test file is not being created.[*]If I comment the IF statement out, and comment the "tbl.Userlogin = userid" out (to prevent an error), a record is successfully added in Web_Log.Dbf with the time and date (the "Short Time" field does appear to work). The test text file is also being created.

A5 Screen Print 2.jpg

It appears that the Xbasic script is not able to reference or see the "Submitbutton" or "Userid" variables. What am I missing? Is it ok to have the Xbasic Code Block on the A5W page, or should this block be in a different location?

I am so close with this and hope to finally solve it. Appreciate any help on this.

Andy Sigrist

[bea2701]

Re: Who is logged in?

Peter - I forgot about that checkbox. I think Alpha is not going to enhance the security model since they are eventually going to an IIS model and that would obviate all of the security framework methods.

I don't think A5V11 IIS will be free but you have to pay for it as feature pack when launched

[Steve Wood]

Re: Who is logged in?

I confirmed that this works both in V10 and V11. So, last observation, go to the A5W page source and move your entire code block to the very top of the page, above the <DOCTYPE>, like in my similar example attached.