What is the best way to count page views in PHP/MySQL?

Question

And by best I mean most efficient, right now placing this on my post.php file is the only thing I can think of:

$query = mysql_query(\" UPDATE posts SET view         


        

Answer 1

This way show how many actual people viewed your website not just how many times they viewed your website.

Step1: Connecting to MySQL

dbconfig.php

try
{
    // Returns DB instance or create initial connection
    $pdo = new PDO("mysql:host={$DB_host};port={$DB_port};dbname={$DB_name};charset=utf8mb4",$DB_user,$DB_pass);
    $pdo->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
}
catch(PDOException $e)
{
     echo $e->getMessage();
}

Step2: Creating MySQL table

--
-- Table structure for table `unique_visitors`
--

CREATE TABLE `unique_visitors` (
  `date` date NOT NULL,
  `ip` text COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci NOT NULL,
  `views` int(1) NOT NULL
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_unicode_ci;

Step3: Create a visitor counter by using IP address.

<?php
    require_once("dbconfig.php");
    // Returns current date in YYYY-MM-DD format
    $date = date("Y-m-d");
    // Stores remote user ip address
    $userIP = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
    // Query for selecting record of current date from the table
    $stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM unique_visitors WHERE date=:date");
    $stmt->execute(['date' => $date]);

    if(count($stmt->fetchAll()) === 0){
        // Block will execute when there is no record of current date in the database table
        $data = [
            'date' => $date,
            'ip' => $userIP,
        ];
        // SQL query for inserting new record into the database table with current date and user IP address
        $sql = "INSERT INTO unique_visitors (date, ip) VALUES (:date, :ip)";
        $pdo->prepare($sql)->execute($data);
    }else{
        $row = $stmt->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
        // Will execute when current IP is not in database
        if(!preg_match('/'.$userIP.'/i',$row['ip'])){
            // Combines previous and current user IP address with a separator for updating in the database
            $newIP = "$row[ip] $userIP";
            $data = [
                'ip' => $newIP,
                'date' => $date,
            ];
            $sql = "UPDATE unique_visitors SET ip=:ip, views=views+1 WHERE date=:date";
            $pdo->prepare($sql)->execute($data);
        }
    }
?>

Answer 2

<?php
session_start();
$counter_name = "counter.txt";
// Check if a text file exists. If not create one and initialize it to zero.
if (!file_exists($counter_name)) {
  $f = fopen($counter_name, "w");
  fwrite($f,"0");
  fclose($f);
}
// Read the current value of our counter file
$f = fopen($counter_name,"r");
$counterVal = fread($f, filesize($counter_name));
fclose($f);
// Has visitor been counted in this session?
// If not, increase counter value by one
if(!isset($_SESSION['hasVisited'])){
  $_SESSION['hasVisited']="yes";
  $counterVal++;
  $f = fopen($counter_name, "w");
  fwrite($f, $counterVal);
  fclose($f); 
}
echo "You are visitor number $counterVal to this site";