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

For What its worth, this is what I did and maybe it can help others even though the article is old.

PHP:

session_start();

$_SESSION['ipaddress'] = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];

if(isset($_SESSION['userID'])){
    if(!strpos($_SESSION['activeID'], '-')){
        $_SESSION['activeID'] = $_SESSION['userID'].'-'.$_SESSION['activeID'];
    }
}elseif(!isset($_SESSION['activeID'])){
    $_SESSION['activeID'] = time();
}

JS

window.setInterval(function(){
            var userid = '';
            var ipaddress = '';
            var action = 'data';

            $.ajax({
                url:'activeUser.php',
                method:'POST',
                data:{action:action,userid:userid,ipaddress:ipaddress},
                success:function(response){
                     //alert(response);                 
                }
            });
          }, 5000);

Ajax call to activeUser.php

if(isset($_POST['action'])){
    if(isset($_POST['userid'])){
        $stamp = time();
        $activeid = $_POST['userid'];
        $ip = $_POST['ipaddress'];

        $query = "SELECT stamp FROM activeusers WHERE activeid = '".$activeid."' LIMIT 1";
        $results = RUNSIMPLEDB($query);

        if($results->num_rows > 0){
            $query = "UPDATE activeusers SET stamp = '$stamp' WHERE activeid = '".$activeid."' AND ip = '$ip' LIMIT 1";
            RUNSIMPLEDB($query);
        }else{
            $query = "INSERT INTO activeusers (activeid,stamp,ip)
                    VALUES ('".$activeid."','$stamp','$ip')";
            RUNSIMPLEDB($query);
        }
    }
}

Database:

CREATE TABLE `activeusers` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `activeid` varchar(20) NOT NULL,
  `stamp` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `ip` text
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

Basically every 5 seconds the js will post to a php file that will track the user and the users ip address. Active users are simply a database record that have an update to the database time stamp within 5 seconds. Old users stop updating to the database. The ip address is used just to ensure that a user is unique so 2 people on the site at the same time don't register as 1 user.

Probably not the most efficient solution but it does the job.