5 Step Tutorial for Realtime Device and User Detection

Tracking the online/offline status of users and devices is called ‘presence.’ It’s a powerful tool for building chat rooms, multiplayer gaming, machine-to-machine communication, and sensor networks to name a few.

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to implement presence user detection functionality into your application in 6 easy steps.

1. Install PubNub API
2. Input publish/subscribe keys
3. Subscribe with presence events
4. Unsubscribe
5. Detect users in the channel

And huzzah! You’re off and running with a simple presence application!

In the video below, Stephen and Tomomi walks you through the process step-by-step. If you want to follow along, check out our Presence Quick Start Tutorial for the code from the video, and use your favorite text editor and the JavaScript console.

Building Realtime Device and User Detection with Presence from PubNub on Vimeo.

We have a number of other quick start tutorials around our core features including:

• Pub/Sub Messaging: Basic publish-subscribe messaging for web, mobile, and IoT apps
• Storage & Playback: Store realtime message streams for future retrieval and playback
• Access Manager: Control access permissions to streams of data by person, device, or channel

Additional Presence User/Device Detection Resources

• 5 Ways to Use the Presence API
• JavaScript Presence Detection
• PHP Presence Detection
• Internet of Things Presence Detection for Smart Devices