How to calculate page views in Codeigniter and limit count by IP address?

Question

I am looking to calculate how many times people have viewed my users profiles on my site.

I would like to keep a count in my database and to stop the count incrementing when a user refreshes the page. Limit by IP.

I understand that a cache of ip addresses would need to be created and emptied on a daily basis.

Is there any instruction on how to do this. Can anyone talk me through it?

Answer 1

1. You can use $this->input->ip_address() to take the user's ip address in the controller
2. In the database you save the ip, the time the user first visited the site and a counter
3. If the time is less than 24 hours, do not increment the counter.
4. If the time is greater than 24 hours update the time for the ip and update the counter.
5. Get the counter: $this->db->select_sum("counter")->get("views_table"); and process the result.

Answer 2

Create databasetable:

id | page_id | ip_address | views

Read out ip address of user ($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']), check if ip-address is present in table for the current page, if so increment the views column, otherwise create new record settings views to one. if views > $x present them a neat message asking them to not be so curious.

wasn't that hard, was it? ;)

and for the part "stop the count incrementing when a user refreshes the page"; do you mean you want to only increment the count if the page view is not a refresh (someone pushing F5)? this is pretty much not possible, don't try it...

And for emptying the database, use a cronjob, or if you do not have access to it, a poormans cron (google for that)

Answer 3

• In the table where you store your users, add a column respresenting the view count.
• Each time your profile is visited you need to increment this value.
• Make a separate table as stated by giorgio and store the IP address but add a DATETIME column.
• Each time your profile is visited you need to check whether the IP address is present in that table for this profile: if it is then do not increment the view count; if it isn't then insert a new row with the IP address, your profile id and a datetime.
• Set up a cleanup job with cron once every day that determines the duration of tracking: remove all entries that are older 1 day, 2 days, a week - anything you want - this is how long the IP will be tracked. This means that when the same IP visits after x days the view count probably increment, unless it's still present in the database.