title: how to make countdown timer to not reset on page refresh
body: <p>I am creating an online exam page for my project. I have a countdown timer, but it resets on page refresh. How can I make it not to reset?
  The timer is set by fetching time from db. I am using php mysql. Please help me.
  Here is my code.</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;?php
     $result=mysql_query("select * from test where testid='29'");
     while($time=mysql_fetch_array($result)){
        $dateFormat  = "d F Y -- g:i a";
        $targetDate  = time() + ($time['duration']*60);
        $actualDate  = time();
        $secondsDiff = $targetDate - $actualDate;
        $remainingDay      = floor($secondsDiff/60/60/24);
        $remainingHour     = floor(($secondsDiff-($remainingDay*60*60*24))/60/60);
        $remainingMinutes  = floor(($secondsDiff-($remainingDay*60*60*24)-($remainingHour*60*60))/60);
        $remainingSeconds  = floor(($secondsDiff-($remainingDay*60*60*24)-($remainingHour*60*60))-($remainingMinutes*60));
        $actualDateDisplay = date($dateFormat,$actualDate);
        $targetDateDisplay = date($dateFormat,$targetDate);
     }
  ?&gt;
  
  &lt;html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"&gt;
  &lt;head&gt;
     &lt;meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /&gt;
     &lt;title&gt;Untitled Document&lt;/title&gt;
     &lt;script type="text/javascript"&gt;
        var days = &lt;?php echo $remainingDay; ?&gt;  
        var hours = &lt;?php echo $remainingHour; ?&gt;  
        var minutes = &lt;?php echo $remainingMinutes; ?&gt;  
        var seconds = &lt;?php echo $remainingSeconds; ?&gt; 
        function setCountDown ()
        {
            seconds--;
            if (seconds &lt; 0){
               minutes--;
               seconds = 59
            }
            if (minutes &lt; 0){
                hours--;
                minutes = 59
            }
            if (hours &lt; 0){
                hours = 23
            }
            document.getElementById("remain").innerHTML = "  "+hours+" hr "+minutes+" min    "+seconds+" sec";
            SD=window.setTimeout( "setCountDown()", 1000 );
            if (minutes == '00' &amp;&amp; seconds == '00') { 
                seconds = "00"; window.clearTimeout(SD);
                window.location = "result.php"
            } 
  
         }
      &lt;/script&gt;
  
  &lt;/head&gt;
  &lt;body onLoad="setCountDown();"&gt;
     &lt;div id="remain"&gt;
           &lt;?php echo "$remainingHour hours, $remainingMinutes minutes, $remainingSeconds seconds";?&gt;
     &lt;/div&gt;
  </code></pre>