I'm developing a web-based system whereby users can edit documents and then e-mail the documents to selected recipients. The "documents" are comprised of the data from several MySQL fields. I want to make sure that two people don't edit a document at the same time. My users log in via a script that starts a session. My initial idea was to have a field to denote file access (1 for "in use" 0 for available). The problem with this would be if a user navigates to a different page or closes the browser window without clicking a "save" or "close" button (which would execute a query to set the in_use field to 0). I'm sure others have dealt with the issue of exclusive access to a MySQL resource. I've looked into InnoDB transactional support, but that doesn't seem to be what I need, since I'm not overly concerned about simultaneously access, just simultaneous editing. How can I ensure the "document" isn't accessed by two people at the same time?
You'll have to implement a checkout/checkin system. The first user to check out the document gets to do whatever he wants with it until he checks it back in.
Yes, that means that if he forgets to do this others are screwed, but you could add a way for other users to forcibly remove the first's checkout removing all changes.
The problem is the web is stateless so how do you know if a user is activiely editing the document? You can't really... he might have gone to lunch, he might just be taking his time.
You might get around some of it by using a hidden frame and some javascript (or ajax stuff) to routinely "ping" the server letting it know the client is still there. That doesn't solve the gone to lunch and left my browser open issue though...
Good luck! -philip -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
