Track the number of “page views” or “hits” of an object?

Question

I am sure that someone has a pluggable app (or tutorial) out there that approximates this, but I have having trouble finding it: I want to be able to track the number of "views" a particular object has (just like a question here on stackoverflow has a "view count").

If the user isn't logged in, I wouldn't mind attempting to place a cookie (or log an IP) so they can't inadvertently run up the view count by refreshing the page; and if a user is logged in, only allow them one "view" across sessions/browsers/IP addresses. I don't think I need it any fancier than that.

I figure the best way to do this is with Middleware that is decoupled from the various models I want to track and using an F expression (of sorts) -- other questions on stackoverlow have alluded to this (1) (2) (3).

But I wonder if this code exists out in the wild already -- because I am not the savviest coder and I'm sure someone could do it better. Smile.

Have you seen it?

Answer 1

I am not sure if it's in the best taste to answer my own question but, after a bit of work, I put together an app that solves the problems in earnest: django-hitcount.

You can read about how to use it at the documentation page.

The ideas for django-hitcount came came from both of my two original answers (Teebes -and- vikingosegundo), which really got me started thinking about the whole thing.

This is my first attempt at sharing a pluggable app with the community and hope someone else finds it useful. Thanks!

Answer 2

You should use the django built-in session framework, it already does a lot of this for you. I implemented this in the following way with a Q&A app where I wanted to track views:

in models.py:

class QuestionView(models.Model):
    question = models.ForeignKey(Question, related_name='questionviews')
    ip = models.CharField(max_length=40)
    session = models.CharField(max_length=40)
    created = models.DateTimeField(default=datetime.datetime.now())

in views.py:

def record_view(request, question_id):

    question = get_object_or_404(Question, pk=question_id)

    if not QuestionView.objects.filter(
                    question=question,
                    session=request.session.session_key):
        view = QuestionView(question=question,
                            ip=request.META['REMOTE_ADDR'],
                            created=datetime.datetime.now(),
                            session=request.session.session_key)
        view.save()

    return HttpResponse(u"%s" % QuestionView.objects.filter(question=question).count())

Vikingosegundo is probably right though that using content-type is probably the more reusable solution but definitely don't reinvent the wheel in terms of tracking sessions, Django already does that!

Last thing, you should probably have the view that records the hit be either called via Ajax or a css link so that search engines don't rev up your counts.

Hope that helps!

Answer 3

You could create a generic Hit model

class Hit(models.Model):
    date = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)
    content_type = models.ForeignKey(ContentType)
    object_id = models.PositiveIntegerField()
    content_object = generic.GenericForeignKey('content_type', 'object_id')

in your view.py you write this function:

def render_to_response_hit_count(request,template_path,keys,response):
    for  key in keys:
        for i in response[key]:
             Hit(content_object=i).save()
    return render_to_response(template_path, response)

and the views that you are interested in return

return render_to_response_hit_count(request,   'map/list.html',['list',],
        {
            'list': l,
        })

This approach gives you the power, not only to count the hit, but to filter the hit-history by time, contenttype and so on...

As the hit-table might be growing fast, you should think about a deletion strategy.

Answer 4

I know this question is an old one and also thornomad has put an app to solve the problem and inspire me with me solution. I would like to share this solution since I didn't find much information about this topic and it may help someone else. My approach is to make a generic model can be used with any view based on the view path (url).

models.py

class UrlHit(models.Model):
    url     = models.URLField()
    hits    = models.PositiveIntegerField(default=0)

    def __str__(self):
        return str(self.url)

    def increase(self):
        self.hits += 1
        self.save()


class HitCount(models.Model):
    url_hit = models.ForeignKey(UrlHit, editable=False, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    ip      = models.CharField(max_length=40)
    session = models.CharField(max_length=40)
    date    = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)

views.py

def get_client_ip(request):
    x_forwarded_for = request.META.get('HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR')
    if x_forwarded_for:
        ip = x_forwarded_for.split(',')[0]
    else:
        ip = request.META.get('REMOTE_ADDR')
    return ip

def hit_count(request):
    if not request.session.session_key:
        request.session.save()
    s_key = request.session.session_key
    ip = get_client_ip(request)
    url, url_created = UrlHit.objects.get_or_create(url=request.path)

    if url_created:
        track, created = HitCount.objects.get_or_create(url_hit=url, ip=ip, session=s_key)
        if created:
            url.increase()
            request.session[ip] = ip
            request.session[request.path] = request.path
    else:
        if ip and request.path not in request.session:
            track, created = HitCount.objects.get_or_create(url_hit=url, ip=ip, session=s_key)
            if created:
                url.increase()
                request.session[ip] = ip
                request.session[request.path] = request.path
    return url.hits

Answer 5

I did it using cookies. Don't know if it's a good idea to do that or not. The following code looks for an already set cookie first if it exists it increases the total_view counter if it is not there the it increases both total_views and unique_views. Both total_views and unique_views are a field of a Django model.

def view(request):
    ...
    cookie_state = request.COOKIES.get('viewed_post_%s' % post_name_slug)
    response = render_to_response('community/post.html',context_instance=RequestContext(request, context_dict))
    if cookie_state:
        Post.objects.filter(id=post.id).update(total_views=F('total_views') + 1)
    else:
        Post.objects.filter(id=post.id).update(unique_views=F('unique_views') + 1)
        Post.objects.filter(id=post.id).update(total_views=F('total_views') + 1)
                        response.set_cookie('viewed_post_%s' % post_name_slug , True, max_age=2678400)
    return response

Answer 6

I did this by creating a model PageViews and making a column "Hits" in it. Every time when Homepage url is hit. I increment the first and only row of column Hit and render it to the template. Here how it looks.

Views.py

def Home(request):

    if(PageView.objects.count()<=0):
        x=PageView.objects.create()
        x.save()
    else:
        x=PageView.objects.all()[0]
        x.hits=x.hits+1
        x.save()
    context={'page':x.hits}
    return  render(request,'home.html',context=context)

Models.py

class PageView(models.Model):
    hits=models.IntegerField(default=0)