How to recognize bots with php?

Question

I am building stats for my users and dont wish the visits from bots to be counted.

Now I have a basic php with mysql increasing 1 each time the page is called.

Answer 1

Check the user agent before incrementing the page view count, but remember that this can be spoofed. PHP exposes the user agent in $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], assuming that the web server provides it with this information. More information about $_SERVER can be found at http://www.php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.server.php.

You can find a list of user agents at http://www.user-agents.org; Googling will also provide the names of those belonging to the major providers. A third possible source would be your web server's access logs, if you can aggregate them.