Hi, Brendon Assuming I am seeing your site right and your folders look something like the following: / /News /Messages /Chat /Chat/My_Chat Presuming you want something in your /News SquishDot or /Messages Folder to say something about My_Chat, something like the following should work: <dtml-with Chat> <dtml-with My_Chat> <dtml-with "objectItems('ChatItem')[-1]"> <dtml-if "(ZopeTime() - 5.0/60.0/24.0) < _['bobobase_modification_time']"> <dtml-var chat_going_img> <dtml-else> <dtml-var chat_not_going_img> </dtml-if> </dtml-with> </dtml-with> </dtml-with> What it does, following the statements in order: go to the Chat folder (using 'with' you can get there from News or Messages) go to My_Chat in the Chat folder ('with' gets you there from Chat) go the last ChatItem object (I think they are already in chronological order) This uses the [-1] python trick to get the last item of a list. if the object's current datetime minus 5m/60m/24h is earlier than the mod time (using 'ugly' syntax around bobo..time because it works), show the chat_is_going image else show the chat_not_going image then close all the above tags This could be optimized a bit. That will be left as an exercise for the reader... Hope this helps. I'm posting this back to the Zope list. -- Jim Washington

Thanks Jim,

Not being a programmer, it would help if you could give me a few tips as to how to accomplish the suggested code. Particularly how to get hold of the bobo_mod_time for the last chatitem from a different part of Zope i.e. a Squishdot news section.

Thanks Brendon

Jim Washington wrote:

...

Good question.

It's tough to know who or whether someone is actually there because logouts are not enforced. Any kind of non-time-based counting or listing algorithm would end up with zombies really quick.

However, for what you seem to need, you could compare the latest chat item's bobobase_modification_time with the current ZopeTime(). Then you could say, for example, that someone has posted in the last five minutes or so.

I think that's how I would do it. Let me know what you figure out. I may add a notifier like that into the next version.

-- Jim Washington

"Brendon Grunewald (70South)" wrote:

...

I would like to put an image or different text at several places in the site when ever there is at least one person logged into the ZRTChat chatroom. i.e. a light on the front page to indicate that there is a chat session presently underway in the chatroom. Question: How can I accomplish the following algorithm, <If logged in users exist> display image or text a <else> display image or text b <fi>

Basically I need to know how I can access a variable or other data type that will tell me whether there is anyone logged on when the page in question is requested. If no such variable exists, is there some other way of accomplishing this!

Thanks Brendon