views:

250

answers:

5

I have a ruby on rails application and it would be nice to see how many hits I get per hour. Is there some simple free software to do this or do I have to develop a custom solution? Thanks!

A: 

Most web servers on the market keep detailed logs.

Azeem.Butt
analyzing the logs is the problem here, not having them
Tony
+2  A: 

google-analytics?

Other options:

You can use log analyzers but you also get some delay as most of them should be ran by something like cron (and info will not be as complete as with google analytics)

Another option is to add some before_filter to your ApplicationController and write info to db (info also will not be as complete) or search for plugin with such functionality

tig
it's not a bad idea but last time i checked it has a delay which i don't like. i will probably use google analytics but it would be nice to have something to view traffic more as it happens
Tony
As I know delay is about a day, but to use it you need just a small piece of javascript and you get a lot of info.
tig
Actually, you can get traffic data the same day. Google Analytics just doesn't default to that. Simply change the date range to include today.
Jared
Thank you Jared! I think that they are not showing this day statistics not to frighten, as it will be very low ))
tig
+2  A: 

Chartbeat and Clicky are two "real-time" analytic tools I've used. Chartbeat tells you quite a bit more from what I remember, although I have only used the free version of clicky.

erik
+2  A: 

Check out Woopra. They have a java application that you can download and run to analyze your traffic and visitors in a very visual manner. Also you can literally see ping dots on a global map showing instantaneous visitors. You install a piece of javascript code and then users visiting your site will be tracked similar to google's analytics, but in a more immediate and in my opinion useful manner.

There's a lot more features that they have available like tracking the page progression that a user clicks through, and others.

Steve Tranby
A: 

I absolutely LOVE glTail.rb http://www.fudgie.org/

it's on github here: http://github.com/Fudge/gltail

Best part is, it's open source, Ruby, and free. :-D

Steven Soroka