Record User Actions Using PHP and Javascript

Question

I am developing an online learning system (PHP, MySQL and Javascript). I would like to track what pages and how long each users spent on each page. Ideally, I would like to record this in a MySQL database. My question is 2 fold: 1. What kind of fields would I include in my db table to record multiple pages accessed? 2. Is this problem best approached by server side only or by using javascript ? e.g. server side: hidden form fields with a page id attached, page id is passed to db and recorded?or Javascript: record all actions in Javascript variables and somehow pass to db at end of session?

Really I am just looking for some high level guidance on an approach as opposed to code snippets.

GF

Answer 1

PHP isn't my normal language, but I would think about creating a module of code that can be called from the top of each of your scripts, that basically logs away "I served this page, with these form variables, at xxx ... ". To be more precise, I would record that in a table.

If you need to know when the user left your page, for a page on another site or perhaps shut down their browser for instance, then a purely server side solution isn't going to cut the mustard. In that event, you are going to have to start thinking about JavaScript, and intercepting events - such as the onUnload event...

Have a read here...

Answer 2

While I know of no solution that can track individual users out of the box (I'm sure there are some), I am pretty sure you could customize Piwik to do this. Piwik aims to be a self-hostable alternative to Google Analytics. It is open source and build on Zend Framework and MySql.

Piwik collects usage statistics through a JavaScript tracking code and a Webbug image for fallback. Basically, what you would need to do is pass the logged in user's user id to the tracking script and then write a plugin that knows how to handle this information.