Timing User Access in ASP.NET MVC, Beginner

Question

In ASP.NET MVC, what is a good way (the preferred way??) to time how long a user has been on a specific page? For example, I want the user to select something and then only allow the user to do something for 30 seconds. Good links or a reference to a page of a book would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

One pretty easy way is to store the last time the user was on the page in a database - the table could have, for example, the fields UserID, Page, and TimeStamp. Whenever the user tries to do whatever you only want to allow for 30 secs, you check against the database if the time has passed or not. (For such short periods of time as 30 seconds, a database might be a little too slow, though... Depends on your requirement of precision, I guess...).

Answer 2

You can keep track of when a user went somewhere and how long they have been there (or had the page open while balancing their check book...you get the idea). The problem is that you need some form of client controller to let them see XYZ for 30 seconds...and then redirect them to the next page that they can see. So if you wan the user to see a resource for X amount of time you need to employ a javascript client side timer to take them away from the resource when their time is expired. This can be done with the time statically coded to the client (which could be changed by the client) or it can be done by making an AJAX request to the server to see if the time has expired. Or it could be done with an embeded flash player. The key here is that your server side doesn't have as much power over the client side as what you are requiring. Most testing sites deploy some form of this client side javascript to keep track of what the user is doing, when, and for how long!

Answer 3

You could use JavaScript's setTimeout() function:

var timeOut = function() {
    alert('Time is up!');
}

setTimeout (timeOut, 30000);

Or you could use a <meta> tag:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="30;url=http://www.example.com/time-is-up.html"&gt;