Question on integrations

Question from a developer who I'm considering hiring to make a Scrabble type game for me, after I told him more than one dev has told me that integrating a 3rd party program with Dolphin is "tricky" at best:

"Is there a session variable in the dolphin system I can use to check if the user is logged in, or to get the username?"

I would appreciate being able to pass along pertinent information about this to him.

Thanks!

If the developer doesn't know Dolphin, I advise against hiring them to develop the integration unless they are coming cheap.  Also, for $5.00 the developer can come here and ask questions all day long; and searching the forums for answers is free.  Why are you asking questions for the developer?  Why isn't that developer here doing research if they don't know Dolphin; and of course the developer should have a copy of Dolphin installed on a test site so they can see how Dolphin works.

By the way, there are forum topics here answering the question you asked so the developer can easily get the answer on their own.

No there is not.

What most people do not realize is that it is imposable for a scripting language such as php to really know if someone is online or offline because there is no way to know if someone is actually still on the site. You do not need to log out of a website. You can navigate away or just close the browser. Neither of which can be prevented, thus you can't force a member to log out normally as you can with logins.

How dolphin try's to do it is though the member menu. If the member menu is still up on someones web browser then it sends updates to the server to update the last access time in the members profile table. If a user navigates away for the page that activity stops thus the reason for the setting in dolphin that indicates how long to wait after last access before someone is considered offline. Most all other scripts use similar methods to try and determine if a user is online or offline.

So determining if someone is online is done with a database query that is done every 30 seconds or so.

This would provide a count of the number of members online.

SELECT COUNT(`ID`) AS `count_onl` FROM `Profiles` WHERE `DateLastNav` > SUBDATE(NOW(), INTERVAL 1 MINUTE) AND (`Couple`=0 OR `Couple`>`ID`)

This would provide a array of members that are online.

SELECT * FROM `Profiles` WHERE `DateLastNav` > SUBDATE(NOW(), INTERVAL 1 MINUTE) AND (`Couple`=0 OR `Couple`>`ID`)


So basically querying the database for the last nav update time is only way to know.

I think Deano's answer helps to seal my answer, if the developer does not know Dolphin, I would reconsider hiring them to do an integration.

 So what if the dev does not know dolphin.  I bet he knows the game script well so should he hire a game dev and dolphin dev ?

Also both of your answers has nothing to do with his question at all.

he don't care if the dev can get on here and pay 5 bucks or not.

The op can ask all the questions he wants. It's his god given right to do so.  

How do you know he didn't search the forums.  

The search here sucks and if you don't type word for word what you are looking for you will never find it.

I agree and I do most of my Boonex Dolphin searches using outside search engines since the forums are indexed in the major search engines.

If I am going to integrate anything into an application, I must know that application, the host application; I must also learn the guest application as well.  So, if I was taking on a job of integration application B into application A, and I don't know one of the applications, one part of my job is to start learning.  I would not ask my client how something works, that is my responsibility; that is part of my job.

 I've relayed that information to the developer, thank you.

I had purchased a few of his scripts previously. including his Scrabble game and was hoping to use them on my dolphin site. Since those scripts are written in Perl, I had been trying to find a way to get the two languages to work together. The search results I kept coming up with gives the idea that using both Perl and PHP successfully together is pretty dicey, so when I recently found out that he programs for PHP as well, I inquired about getting the game that way.

Yes, I do try to find the answers myself before asking for help. When I can't find the answer, or (more often the case) I don't understand the information, to ask those who really know what they are talking about makes much more sense than pretending that I do when I don't (yet).

I apologize for making the mistake of thinking that is what these forums are for.

Your help is much appreciated, Deano! Again, thank you.

 RE:

 Let me know how that works out.  Hasbro just loves to sue people that come out with "scrabble like" games.