Best way to track (direct) file downloads

Question

what is the best method to track direct file downloads? I found some solution, for example this one:

http://www.gayadesign.com/diy/download-counter-in-php-using-htacces

Answer 1

Feel free to use :)

.htaccess:

RewriteEngine on    
RewriteRule ^(.*).(rar|zip|pdf)$ http://xy.com/downloads/download.php?file=$1.$2 [R,L]    

mysql:

CREATE TABLE `download` (
    `filename` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
    `stats` int(11) NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY  (`filename`)
)

download.php

Source - gayadesign.com