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How do i know what unixtime a php session will expire?

Answer 1

+2 A:

You can store the expiration time in the database and then display an alert when that is about to happen. Or you could store the expiration time in a cookie value, and then have javascript that constantly checks to see if the session is about to expire.

webdestroya 2010-04-20 04:35:50

thanks for the quick answer: how do i know what the session expiration time is? I've been crawling through the php docs but not had much luck...

Steve 2010-04-20 04:37:53

@Steve where did you look? what page?

Col. Shrapnel 2010-04-20 04:38:57

Do you mean the "default" session expiration time? I think the default would be 1440 determined by `session.gc_maxlifetime` (which would start garbage-collecting the session after 1440 seconds) but the cookie can last for as long as you set it (default is until browser is closed). Look at http://www.php.net/manual/en/session.configuration.php

webdestroya 2010-04-20 04:41:20

http://nz2.php.net/manual/en/function.session-cache-expire.php doesn't seem to tell me what I want. http://nz2.php.net/manual/en/function.session-get-cookie-params.php offers the cookie_lifetime, which defaults to "0" (meaning when the browser is closed). I want to know roughly what unixtime the server is going to invalidate any given session.

Steve 2010-04-20 04:42:33

Well you would just have to do simple sums to figure it out, something like `time()+1440` for whenever the session is created.

webdestroya 2010-04-20 04:43:45

@webdestroya: yes, of course. I'd spotted gc_maxlifetime but skipped over it because of the gc_probability and gc_divisor. Silly me. Looks like this is the number i needed. I knew the default was roughly 20 minutes...

Steve 2010-04-20 04:46:54

@steve every time your server involved, it is max value of session.gc_maxlifetime. and session_cache_expire is quite different value, it's another matter.

Col. Shrapnel 2010-04-20 04:46:57

@webdestroya: thanks so much for your help: i upvoted your comment and answer. I wish I could give two ticks... one for you and one for Col Shrapnel...

Steve 2010-04-20 04:54:39

@steve thanks for the upvote :) glad to help out

webdestroya 2010-04-20 04:56:33

Answer 2

+2 A:

that's very easy. you have always session timeout left, which is 1440 seconds by default. to get actual value you can use

$seconds=ini_get('session.gc_maxlifetime');

but there is another way, better one. if your application get a text after session expired, save this text into session, ask for the password, and then save the text as if it was the regular submit.

Col. Shrapnel 2010-04-20 04:37:24

Thanks. Elegant solution re saving text into the session and re-authenticating

Steve 2010-04-20 04:52:43

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How do i know what unixtime a php session will expire?

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