How to get last_activity in Codeigniter 3?

Question

My sessions in Codeigniter are timing out in less time than I specified in the "config/constants.php" file. I set that constant to 3600 seconds (one hour) but sometimes I get kicked out in 5 or 10 minutes. This happens in regular MVC calls, no ajax involved.

I'm trying to access the last_activity value in the CI session, but this is what the CI documentation currently states: "last_activity: Depends on the storage, no straightforward way. Sorry!"

So how can I access that value? Any ideas?

Here's some additional info:

    `$config['sess_driver'] = 'files';
    $config['sess_cookie_name'] = 'ci_session';
    $config['sess_expiration'] = EXPIRE_SESSION;
    $config['sess_save_path'] = sys_get_temp_dir();
    $config['sess_match_ip'] = FALSE;
    $config['sess_time_to_update'] = 86400;
    $config['sess_regenerate_destroy'] = FALSE;'

I am not sure, but may be you can't get your constant value here in config.php, please try once with hard-coded value : 3600 — kishor10d
Not sure what this is sys_get_temp_dir() but save path some thing like APPPATH . 'cache/sessions/'; — Mr. ED
@kishor10d: Thanks for the reply. Executing "print '<pre>' . print_r($this->config, TRUE) . '</pre>';" tells me that I can in fact use constants in "config.php". Using the value "3600" or "EXPIRE_SESSION" (which is also 3600) is exactly the same. — Pedro Araujo Jorge
@wolfgang1983: The function sys_get_temp_dir does just what it says, it outputs your system's temporary files directory. In my case it's "C:\Users\pedro\AppData\Local\Temp" and that location does have a lot of files and folders so it looks like it's working. — Pedro Araujo Jorge
@PedroAraujoJorge I would not use that my self I would use a folder in application directory somewhere. — Mr. ED

Joe Joe · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-07T18:27:05

If you're using the default session handling scheme, the last activity is the timestamp "column", or whatever it looks like in the session file. Should update every time you refresh a page. It may not update when you do something like access a modal or manipulate the page via AJAX, I haven't checked.

Here's what it looks like from the manual as a database insert:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `ci_sessions` (
        `id` varchar(128) NOT NULL,
        `ip_address` varchar(45) NOT NULL,
        `timestamp` int(10) unsigned DEFAULT 0 NOT NULL,
        `data` blob NOT NULL,
        KEY `ci_sessions_timestamp` (`timestamp`)
);

How to get last_activity in Codeigniter 3?

1 Answers