❔ Is there osme way to check if a user is active/online with aspnet core identity? (cookie)
Title is slightly incorrect: is there some way to check based on a users id if they are signed in*
I understand that when you sign in, a cookie is created and sent to the browser and is then validated on each specified request.
and then when you sign out, the cookie is invalidated...
so there's no concept of bein "signed in"...
in my situation, i need to check if x and y users are logged in inside a webhook request, and so there's no user request cycle here so i cant check the httpcontext if the request is coming from any given user.
So... my thought was that I could maybe update a flag in the db when a user logs in or out, but when they close their browser, they would still be signed in but inactive.
Is there soome "common" approach to this problem? how would a "last seen" function be implemented here?
Would global action filter or middleware with a lastseen property be good enough?
47 Replies
or signalr and check their connection
There is no straight answer with this one. You would need to create a new table or column where you can store the user last logged in time and use some sort of websocket to update it after some few seconds or after 5 mins. There are few ways you can go about this but it's not fun
ok so im on the right track then.
i think there's a oslution with signalr.
When the webhook request comes in, i can check the connection of the participants in the conversation.
shouldnt that be enough?
@mutlangi
since the webhook is already responsible for calling sendasync on the hubcontext (i broadcast to the client only after the webhook confirms my message has been persisted in this case).
That should work.
but wouldnbt the problem the nbe that the connection is only established or broken if they are interacting with teh chat? technically they are still "online" if they navigate to other parts of the site
With signalr or websockets. Connection doesn't need a user to interact with the application
It will work on it's own.
@mutlangiyeah but when should the connection first be established? or is that automatically done when they enter the site?
You can do that. Look into how notifications works and how a chat app is able to know when a message is there without a user interacting with it. Dotnet does have libraries to assist you with that
u got any libraries u can recommend? ill look into that
@mutlangibut i feel like all i'd need to do is update teh flag in the hub OnDisconnected and OnConnected...
and then simply fetch the status from teh db
At the moment nop. I'm on mobile so I can't check any previous projects which implemented this kind of things.
That can work. On in your client you need to check the hub.disconnrcted function. Maybe implement a function to update your server that client has disconnected
Unknown User•17mo ago
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@TeBeClonewhat about using middleware and then caching user activity and a write-behind strategy of updating the database with the cache values every 5th/10th minute (or whatever threshhold i deem to be useful)
or could youi redirect me to the docs i need to read on signalr? i'm reading here
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/signalr/hubs?view=aspnetcore-7.0
currently, all I do basically is set user.IsLoggedIn = true in onconnectedasync and false in ondisconnectedasync.
problem with this is obviously that if the user is on mobile and pc, and if he disconnects on one of them, it will look in the db as though he's offline
Unknown User•17mo ago
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@TeBeCloneno I mean an alternate approach, separate from signalr. What im trying to do is track user activity, that's it. To see if they are "active" or "inactive" (not sure what that means, could be online, offline, whatever). Just some activity flag or some property indicating their last active status
so the current approach is signalr and relying on connection
but you could also use a middleware approach to track users activity, but it doesnt seem great to update the database on every request. So maybe cache and then use executeupdateasync every 10th minute or whatever.
Unknown User•17mo ago
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preferrably not use session
Unknown User•17mo ago
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i've configured aspnet core identity with cookie configuration
that's why
Unknown User•17mo ago
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so no jwt
Unknown User•17mo ago
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sure but when i say cookie i mean aspnet core identity
so auth cookie
Unknown User•17mo ago
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no but u said "you even mentioned cookie"
that's teh cookie im talking about
what im trying to do is, send an email to users when their conversation/DMs are updated when they are offline
Unknown User•17mo ago
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it doesn't seem like a totally far-fetched thing to do
Unknown User•17mo ago
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yes, sure, but how does that tell us whether the user is online or not? in my current setup, the cookie is remopved*when you explicitly sign out using the signinmanager.
but when you close the browser, you are not signed out in my case
Unknown User•17mo ago
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ok so...
i communicate iwht twilio rest api, when their webhook tells me the message has been successfully received and persisted, i invoke icontexthub to push the message to all relevant clients
here, i want to email the participants of the conversation if the yare not "online", if they are not signed in or are inactive, whatever
Unknown User•17mo ago
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but the signalr approach i already have seems very simple and good enough then.
since it doesnt have to be extremely accurate
just good enough
Unknown User•17mo ago
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can i not add OnValidatePrincipal to the application cookie events?
and then add that users last activity to a cache
Unknown User•17mo ago
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OnValidatePrincipal
Invoked to validate the principal. yes so this one i mentioned above? i dont think onsignedin is very useful, since we never know when they sign out unless they explicitly sign out?
Invoked to validate the principal. yes so this one i mentioned above? i dont think onsignedin is very useful, since we never know when they sign out unless they explicitly sign out?
Unknown User•17mo ago
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yes ok, but regarding db vs cache... should i use some write behind strategy or should i just stick to cache straight up?
anyway thanks a lot
was very sueful
Unknown User•17mo ago
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the bult in imemorycache in this case
because its not distributed?
Unknown User•17mo ago
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why? in case i scale up?
Unknown User•17mo ago
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sure
Unknown User•17mo ago
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man honestly at this point it seems like signalr could do the job very efficiently without much overhead and minimal code
at least somewhat approximating an accurate flag on the user
Was this issue resolved? If so, run
/close - otherwise I will mark this as stale and this post will be archived until there is new activity.