How to use "onUserAfterLogin" Event?

Question

I want my users to get an email when they login for the first time. I am thinking to create an array to store userids that have logged in before. When users login, compare their userid with the array, if it is in the array then do nothing, if not then add the id into the array and proceed to generate email. The question is, where is the best place to do this comparison? I am thinking it should be right after a user logs in and find this onUserAfterLogin event on https://docs.joomla.org/Plugin/Events/User. But how do I use it? And should I categorize what I want to do as a plugin?

Answer 1

Yes, writing a plugin and leveraging the onUserAfterLogin event seems like the best way.

As for how to check for the first visit:

1. You can check the user's lastvisitDate column for a 0000-00-00 00:00:00 value as discussed in this Joomla Forum Thread: First login redirect plugin. However, if there was an error in delivering the email, you will need to add a consideration for how you want to be alerted of the failure.

2. You can create a new database table where you keep a record of all successfully emailed users. Then from the plugin, query that table for the user's id, if the row exists you never email again, if the email delivery fails don't add them to the list.