How to show the user when his session will timeout

[Thorsten Eilers]

Morning,
I would like to show my users (guests and users logged in) when their session will timeout.

Is this value stored in a session-var in CF? In which one?

I thought to read this value, output it to javascript and have a javascript counter timing down the remaining time.

What do you think of this. It could be useful for someone filling out a large form, who will be upset if the session timed out before submitting it.

[Kym Kovan]

Afternoon over here :-)

The session timeout counter gets reset to zero on every page request so
the usual way of doing this is to have a js counter showing the
countdown on the page as you suggest but there is no need to read the
counter it always is at zero when the page is processed.

You can also reset the session timeout counter by using ajax, in fact if
you are doing something like on-the-fly-validation via jQuery then the
session timeout is being reset at every field entry or whenever you do
an ajax call so you need to handle that in the page display.


hth,
Kym

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Yours,

Kym

[Thorsten Eilers]

That makes sense, Kym. Thanks for your post.

[Merritt]

I suggest you check out this blog post:
http://jehiah.cz/a/extended-operations-on-coldfusion-sessions

I know there is a way to get the time remaining without "touching" the session and resetting it.  Check out the section on getTimeSinceLastAccess() and the rewindlife blog post as well.  Good luck.

-Merritt

[Chris Peters]

The idleTimeout jQuery plugin does a nice job of handling this.

http://philpalmieri.com/2009/09/jquery-session-auto-timeout-with-prompt/ 

Bonus points if you make it dynamic by basing it on your application's this.SessionTimeout.

// events/onrequeststart.cfm

request.sessionTimeout = this.SessionTimeout * 1000;

// Bottom of views/layout.cfm

#hiddenFieldTag(id="session-timeout", name="sessionTimeout", value=request.sessionTimeout)#

// Example jQuery code

$(document).idleTimeout({

inactivity: $("#session-timeout").val() - 300000, // Show popup 5 minutes before session timeout

noconfirm: 300000, // Show "no confirm" box for 5 minutes

sessionAlive: 1800000, // Keep session alive on server every 30 minutes just to be safe

alive_url: "/keep-alive",

logout_url: "/sessions/timeout",

redirect_url: "/login"

});

--

[Thorsten Eilers]

Thanks Chris. Your suggested plugin look rather sophisticated.
Thorsten