PHP Forum

**Spud In Disguise** · 08-29-2008, 12:17 PM

Hey guys, I need help creating something. I've thought about it and I think this would be the easiest solution to my problem, it's just I'm not totally sure on how to go about making it. Anyway, I need to time how long a user has spent on a specific page on my site. I recon this could be done by setting a cookie that records the time the page was loaded. There is then a link to another page and on that page will be the amount of time spent on the page. I guess this page will calculate the time difference between the time recorded in the cookie and the current time.

Can anyone help with this?

**kbfirebreather** · 08-30-2008, 12:28 PM

this is one solution I could see potentially being viable.

I guess I would use multiple cookies for this setup.

cookie set A
cookie[starttime] => start time of the current page
cookie[page] => page of the start time

cookie set B
cookie[endtime] => end time of the previous page

now when the page loads, you create the end time cookie (cookie set b). then you read the start time and the start time page cookie values(cookie set a), and you now have the time they spent on that page, and the page

then once you do this, you create the new cookie start time and cookie start page cookies(cookie set A) for the new page.

I'm pretty sure that will accomplish what you're looking for.

**Spud In Disguise** · 08-31-2008, 07:08 AM

Just to let you all know I now have a solution to this. I've included the code below in case any one else wants to use this system. Thanks for your help up to now though

Basically this times how long a user has a page loaded/open for and then writes that value to a cookie. The cookie is then retrieved and displayed on another page. I know there are a lot of potential problems with this, for example people opening another window or minimizing for a time, but for me that is perfect.

Page 1

Code:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>

<script type="text/javascript">
function person_in(){enter=new Date();}
function person_out(){
var  exit=new Date();
var  time_dif=(exit.getTime()-enter.getTime())/1000;
  time_dif=Math.round(time_dif);
  alert("You've only been on this page for: "+time_dif+" seconds!!");
createCookie('myCookie', time_dif ,1*24*60*60*1000); // set for 1 day
}

function load(e) {
var enabled = Cookie.isEnabled();
if (!enabled)
alert('You must enable cookies.');
}

function createCookie(name,value,days) {
	if (days) {
		var date = new Date();
		date.setTime(date.getTime()+(days*24*60*60*1000));
		var expires = "; expires="+date.toGMTString();
	}
	else var expires = "";
	document.cookie = name+"="+value+expires+"; path=/";
}
</script>
</head>

<body onLoad="person_in()" onUnload="person_out()">
<a href="page2.htm">link</a> 
</body>
</html>

Page 2

Code:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>

<script type="text/javascript">
function load(e) {
var enabled = Cookie.isEnabled();
if (!enabled)
alert('You must enable cookies.');
}
document.write(readCookie('myCookie')); 

function readCookie(name) {
	var nameEQ = name + "=";
	var ca = document.cookie.split(';');
	for(var i=0;i < ca.length;i++) {
		var c = ca[i];
		while (c.charAt(0)==' ') c = c.substring(1,c.length);
		if (c.indexOf(nameEQ) == 0) return c.substring(nameEQ.length,c.length);
	}
	return null;
}
</script>
</head>

<body>
</body>
</html>