active users script, user count not working properly - php

Question

i have written a script to output active users on my site....
part of this is counting unique ips in the log, as the array i use to split the lines / data unloads active users from the array list after 5 minutes.....
however the "3 online users now" count is not working properly.....
it kinda works.... when someone views a page, it says there is 1 user
lets say i view a page.... 1 visitor
then user 2 views a page .... 2 visitors
but if i then view another page, it displays 3 users.....
even though i use the same ip for both page requests....
here is my code
$data = file_get_contents('active-log.txt');
$break = "\r\n";
$lines = explode($break, $data);
foreach ($lines as $key => $value) {
$active_ip[] = $lines[$key][1];
}
$active_ip_count = array_unique($active_ip);
$active_users = (count($active_ip_count));
$active_users is the variable i use to display how many unique visitors are online at one time
thanks in advance for anyone that can help me thanks
....
EDIT
.....
here is a sample of the log saved....
1328469393|157.55.39.84|g-book
1328469398|157.55.39.84|downloads
1328469400|157.55.39.84|badger
1328469404|157.55.39.84|home
1328469408|157.55.39.84|boneyard-dogs
the first part is timestamp (to remove the line from array, if timestamp is older than 5 minutes... this works fine)
the second part is ip
third part is page viewed and the new line is created with \r\n
$lines[$key][1] is the variable for each ip in each line....
as im not exacly a php expert, when writing scripts, i test them heavily while developing, and each time i add a new line of script , i echo the data, to check its what i hope, to make sure i make no mistakes......
here is a section of code that i didnt paste as i didnt think it was necessary....
foreach($lines as $k=>$v) {
$lines[$k] = explode("|", $v); }
// echo $lines[0][0]; // now this is first array of first line .... line 2 / url would be - $lines[1][2]
this is in my code, straight after the line "$lines = explode($break, $data);" in my code

Answer 1

Have you looked at the output of var_dump($active_ip) after the foreach loop ends? With this setup, I'm pretty sure $lines[$key][1] is simply the first character of the line you're dealing with, so that's not going to work well for a number of reasons. What does active-log.txt look like? Does it only contain IP addresses or user names, too? If it only contains IP addresses, consider using something like this:
<?php
$data = file('active-log.txt');
$no_duplicate_ips = array_unique($data);
$active_users = (count($no_duplicate_ips));
?>
Edit:
Right, that makes sense then. Try this:
$data = file_get_contents('active-log.txt');
$break = "\r\n"; //Note that it's generally a good idea to use PHP_EOL throughout your code, for greater cross-platform compatibility
$lines = explode($break, $data);
$exploded_data = array();
$active_ips = array();
foreach($lines as $v) {
$exploded_data = explode("|", $v);
//Now check whether the timestamp is not > 5 min
if(TIMESTAMP CHECK HERE) {
//OK, this one is not too old
$active_ips[] = $exploded_data[1];
}
}
$active_ip_count = array_unique($active_ip);
$active_users = (count($active_ip_count));