Once a day page

[alexgeek]

I was wondering if anyone knows of a script that will be shown to a user,
then they are taken away from it and cannot visit it again for a certain amount of time (12 hours, a day, a week etc.)
The problem i see, is that if i store it in a session or something and the user logs out, when they log back in shouldn't they be able to see the page again?

[Blake121]

Try setting a cookie. That stays on their hard drive for as long as you tell it to, so unless they delete it you can keep the person from viewing the content as long as you want.

try something like this...

PHP: Select all

<?php

if(isset($_COOKIE['foo'])) { //check if cookie is set
 echo('You may not view this content!'); //if not echo error messge
} else { //check if it's not set
 echo('You may view this content only once.'); //echo message
 setcookie('foo', 'bar', time() + (60 * 60 * 24)); //set the cookie. (see below)
}

?>

The setcookie function sets a cookie obviously. The first part is the cookie name. (Picked up through $_COOKIE['name']; )
The second part is it's value or what it contains. (Accessed through $_COOKIE['name']['value']; )
The third part is how long it's set. In this case I have used the functuion time() which is now, plus 60 x 60 x 24 which equals one day. You can change that to however long you want.

Hope that all makes sense.

Blake

[alexgeek]

I will settle for that unless there's a foolproof way.
so that if they delete the cookie it stills works.
is there a way i can set it on the server, like
a value on a mysql database that resets every 24 hours?

[c010depunkk]

Yeah, you could log IPs in a database.

[alexgeek]

say i have a mysql table:
--------------------
|username |timedpage|
---------------------
|alex | 1 |
---------------------

is there a way to check the if the user has a value of 1 for the timedpage column, then reset it to 0 after 24 hours?
if that makes sense

[alexgeek]

i don't know if this will work:
have a column that starts off as todays date,
if when they go to this page, it adds one day to the date in the database,
on the page it checks if the user's value is equal to the todays date,
if the date is correct they can see the page,
if the date is for tomorrow they can't.
then the next day comes and it will be the right date and they can see it.
make sense?

[c010depunkk]

Yup, it does.
But what if the user doesn't visit the page for a few days and then comes back....

[alexgeek]

hmm cronjob?

[c010depunkk]

NOOOO... it does not need to be that complicated.

You have a database that looks, for example like this: id | ip | timestamp. Then, when someone views the page, you get their IP and check your database for that IP. If it is not there, you add their IP and the current timestamp. If it is there, you use the timestamp to check if the user is allowed to view the page.

Here's some pseudo-code. Haven't tested it but something like this should do the trick:

PHP: Select all

<?php
$view_time=60*60*24; // time in seconds that a viewer is not allowed to view the page again (24 hours)
$ip=getenv(REMOTE_ADDR); // get IP address
$current_timestamp=time(); // get current timestamp
$query=mysql_query("SELECT * FROM ip_log WHERE ip = '".$ip."' AND timestamp > '".($current_timestamp-$view_time)."'");
if(mysql_num_rows($query) > 0) { // check if any ip was found
    echo("You are not allowed to view this page"); // not OK
} else {
    echo("Enjoy the content"); // OK
}
?>

I hope I'm understanding the question. Good Luck!

[alexgeek]

i'm going to use that to try and change it to users instead of an IP thanks

[alexgeek]

you know in :

PHP: Select all

else {
    echo("Enjoy the content"); // OK
} 

should there be a code that also adds ip/username and timestamp to the database?

[c010depunkk]

Yup, you're right. Sorry, I forgot that. You could also delete all the entries that are older than the 'ban' time because they are no longer needed.

[alexgeek]

So would the full code be:

<?php
$view_time=60*60*24; // time in seconds that a viewer is not allowed to view the page again (24 hours)
$username = $_SESSION['loggedin']
$current_timestamp=time(); // get current timestamp
$query=mysql_query("SELECT * FROM log WHERE username = '".$username."' AND timestamp > '".($current_timestamp-$view_time)."'");
if(mysql_num_rows($query) > 0) { // check if any ip was found
echo("You are not allowed to view this page"); // not OK
} else {
$query2 = "update set timestamp = ".$current_timestamp." where username = ".$username.";
$updatelog = mysql_query($query2) or die(mysql_error());
echo("Enjoy the content"); // OK

}
?>

[Blake121]

That's almost it. You forgot the Database name in your update statement though.

PHP: Select all

 $query2 = "update log set timestamp = ".$current_timestamp." where username = ".$username."; 

That should work now. Just remember when making the database don't make the "timestamp" field a timestamp use something like varchar instead. MySQL times and PHP times are completely different so it would mess things right up.

[alexgeek]

thanks