Zend plugin to capture referrer for every visitor

Question

To build some simple analytics for our site - I am trying to capture the source from where the user lands on our page and if he ends up registering - store the source in the database.

Since this code has to be on all the pages - I thought of adding it to the layout.phtml This is what I have so far (just a rough draft)

$ref_cookie = $_COOKIE["xyzcom-referrer"];
if(!Zend_Auth::getInstance()->hasIdentity() && $ref_cookie==null) {
$ref=null;
$ref=$_GET['ref'];
if($ref==null || strlen($ref)==0)
    $ref= $_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"];
//set in cookie incase user returns later and registers
setcookie("xyzcom-referrer",$ref);
}

Its pretty self explanatory - if the user is not logged in - I'm trying to get the referrer either thru the ref parameter or thru HTTP_REFERRER. The reason I'm storing it in a cookie is a user might visit the site today but sign up one week later.

So everytime a user registers, I will see if this cookie is set - if it is - I will get the value and insert it in the database as the referring source.

Is this the best way to approach this. Or should I write like a controller plugin - if so how do I go about it. Thanks for your tips.

Answer 1

The layout is not really the place for this sort of logic, so yes I would suggest moving it to a controller plugin. This should be straightforward, create a plugin class, register it with the front controller, and in the class create a preDispatch method (as explained in the manual) and move your code to that.

There are also a few issues with your code:

• You are assuming HTTP_REFERER will be set, but it may not be.

• You are setting a session only cookie (that will be deleted when the user closes his/her browser) without a path (meaning if it is set in a sub-directory on your site it will not be available to your homepage). You'll want to supply the 3rd and 4th parameters to setcookie() to address these problems.