asked on

Unique page visits

I have a website with several pages.
My client would like to see a hit counter for each page.
I'd like to do this with a session.
I have a table with IP, URL, and timestamp fields.
Here is the code that is included on each PHP page of the site:

<?php
  session_start();
  include '../dbConn.php';
    $host = $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];
    $script = $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'];
    $currentURL = $host . $script;
    //echo "Current page is: " . $currentURL;
    
    if(((!isset($_SESSION['lastPage'])) or ($_SESSION['lastPage'] <> $currentURL)) and (!isset($_SESSION['userIP']))) {
        $userIP = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
        $_SESSION['userIP'] = $userIP;
        //echo "You're IP address is: " . $userIP;
        $vDate = date("Y-m-d");
        $vTime = date("H:i:s");
        
        $mSQL = "INSERT INTO `hitcount` (`URL`,`IP`) VALUES ('$currentURL', '$userIP')";
        mysqli_query($con,$mSQL);
    }
    
    $mSQL = "SELECT COUNT(*) AS `visits` FROM `hitcount` WHERE `URL` = '$currentURL'";
    $result=$con->query($mSQL);
    while($row = $result->fetch_array()) {
        $cntValue = str_pad($row['visits'], 10, "0", STR_PAD_LEFT);
    }
    $_SESSION['lastPage'] = $currentURL;
?>

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It's kinda working...
When you visit the home page the counter increments and shows the newest value.
However, when you visit subsequent pages, the count DOES NOT increment.
I want to exclude multiple visits to the sme page in the same session so I can track "unique" visits to each page and avoid F5 artificially inflating the results.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Gary

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Ray Paseur

The professional solution is Google Analytics. You can supplement that with your own hit counter, but that's kind of a 1998 idea. You won't see any professionally built web site with a hit counter today. The session may not be a useful part of the answer because it is lost after any period of inactivity. I wouldn't worry about people hitting the F5 key -- that's an edge case.

You might think about adding the count to the data base table. If you keep one record for each visitor, you'll have a very long table, indeed!

Looks like it does not display $cntValue anywhere.

dimmergeek

ASKER

Thanks! So much simpler than what I had.

dimmergeek

ASKER

Ray, thank you for your post.
The client is requesting the counter....I tried to steer him away.
This code is counter.php which is an include on subsequent pages.
$cntValue is used by the parent page.