Counting page views with Laravel

Question

I want to implement page view counter in my app. What I\'ve done so far is using this method :

public function showpost($titleslug) {
        $post = Post::where         


        

Answer 1

2020 Update (2)/ With Eloquent Relationships for Laravel 6

If you don't want to add a package to your application. I have developed the following solution based on "Jean Marcos" and "Learner" contribution to the question and my own research.

All credit goes to "Jean Marcos" and "Learner", I felt like I should do the same as Learner and update the code in a way the would be beneficial to others.

First of all, make sure you have a sessions table in the database. Otherwise, follow the steps in Laravel documentations to do so: HTTP Session

Make sure that the sessions are stored in the table. If not, make sure to change the SESSION_DRIVER variable at the .env set to 'database' not 'file' and do composer dump-autoload afterwards.

After that, you are all set to go. You can start by running the following console command:

php artisan make:model PostView -m 

This will generate both the model and migration files.

Inside of the migration file put the following Schema. Be cautious with the columns names. For example, my posts table have the "slug" column title name instead of the "titleslug" which was mentioned in the question.

  Schema::create('post_views', function (Blueprint $table) {

        $table->increments("id");
        $table->unsignedInteger("post_id");
        $table->string("titleslug");
        $table->string("url");
        $table->string("session_id");
        $table->unsignedInteger('user_id')->nullable();
        $table->string("ip");
        $table->string("agent");
        $table->timestamps();
    });

Then put the following code inside the PostView model file.

belongsTo(Post::class);
    }

    public static function createViewLog($post) {
        $postViews= new PostView();
        $postViews->post_id = $post->id;
        $postViews->slug = $post->slug;
        $postViews->url = request()->url();
        $postViews->session_id = request()->getSession()->getId();
        $postViews->user_id = (auth()->check())?auth()->id():null; 
        $postViews->ip = request()->ip();
        $postViews->agent = request()->header('User-Agent');
        $postViews->save();
    }
}

Now inside the Post model write the following code. This to create the relation between the posts table and the post_views table.

use App\PostView;

   public function postView()
    {
        return $this->hasMany(PostView::class);
    }

In the same Post model you should put the following code. If the user is not logged in the the code will test the IP match. Otherwise, it will test both the session ID and the user ID as each user might have multiple sessions.

public function showPost()
{
    if(auth()->id()==null){
        return $this->postView()
        ->where('ip', '=',  request()->ip())->exists();
    }

    return $this->postView()
    ->where(function($postViewsQuery) { $postViewsQuery
        ->where('session_id', '=', request()->getSession()->getId())
        ->orWhere('user_id', '=', (auth()->check()));})->exists();  
}

You are ready now to run the migration.

php artisan migrate

When the user ask for the post. The following function should be targeted inside the PostController file:

use App\PostView;

     public function show(Post $post)
        {
//Some bits from the following query ("category", "user") are made for my own application, but I felt like leaving it for inspiration. 
            $post = Post::with('category', 'user')->withCount('favorites')->find($post->id);

            if($post->showPost()){// this will test if the user viwed the post or not
                return $post;
            }

            $post->increment('views');//I have a separate column for views in the post table. This will increment the views column in the posts table.
            PostView::createViewLog($post);
            return $post;
        }

As I have a separate column for views in the post table. To search the most viewed posts in the last 24 hours you write this code in the controller. Remove paginate if you don't have pagination:

public function mostViwedPosts()
{
    return Posts::with('user')->where('created_at','>=', now()->subdays(1))->orderBy('views', 'desc')->latest()->paginate(5);
}

I hope this would help/save someones time.