What I im asking is rather conceptual rather than a programming problem.
for instance say i have this url which a room called the lovelyroom
http://example.com/room/thelovelyroom
every room has a time counter in seconds, we call it T that keeps getting updated every second.
and every user that enters(requests) the room by going to that url, needs to get the value (T + 2)
The PROBLEM:
where can i store that time counter T for each available room?
I was thinking of using mysql, but that would be overkill especially that i am updating the time field every second.
The other choice was to use redis, which i heard was good for this sort of stuff, fast short term data.
I really just wanted what was the best way, without having too much overhead.
When does the time T start? Is it from the first time a user views a page?
If that's the case, why not store timestamp of first access and then, for subsequent page requests, get timestamp again and subtract the two to calculate number of elapsed seconds. That way you don't need to update the time field every second - only need to do anything on a request.
I'd use mysql for that. Basically just a table with url, user, and timestamp.
Of course, I might not be understanding your question...