Guess who's back? Back again?... for the rest, go listen to the frikkin' song! I am not here to sing songs for you. Anyroad, what's up? Actually, no one cares... so, let's get started! Remember back in the day, when you visited your favourite forum and it would say something like "$N$ users online: $(n)$ members, $(x)$ guests" (of course $ {n, x} \in \mathbb{N} $)? This is called user presence. It's a simple way to show your users that they are not alone on your website. It's also a great way to show off your mad skills to your friends. So, let's get started!
Before we start, I would like to discuss your options to track user presence on your website. There are multiple ways to do this:
WebSockets: This is the most modern and probably the most efficient way to do this. WebSockets will provide you with a persistent, bidirectional communication channel between your server and the client. Talking in a broad perspective, you would set up a WebSocket server that listens for incoming connections and handles WebSocket events, and when a client establishes a WebSocket connection, register their presence by storing relevant data (e.g., user ID, session ID) on the server. Then you can implement mechanisms to track user activity, such as sending heartbeats or receiving client-initiated events.
