PHP: How to make "Latest visit" count nicer

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+2 Q:

PHP: How to make "Latest visit" count nicer

Hello.

I have "Your latest 5 visits" at the home page of the user when he logs on. It works great without any problem.

But then i want to change it. I dont know how i should do this, but someway somehow only count the user 1 time at the time, and not e.g 10 times if he visits/refresh your profile.

So should i do this with a time checker? And for how long should it only count 1? When should second count? I need some idea for this, as I dont know if i should make it count 1 time per 10 minutes or 1 time per 1 minute..

So a good solution/giving a good realistic minute tip will answer the question.

Before anything else, you need to identify the visitor somehow -- either by IP address, a cookie or an username if accessing the profile requires logging in. And then a data structure to contain the visitation log for all profiles. For example, a SQL table where each row contains a visitor id, a profile id and the visitation time.

The last thing is the definition a time interval that counts as a single visit. For example 1 day -- if the previous visit happened less than 24 hours ago, you only update the time of the relevant SQL row. Otherwise you add a new row.

Edit Another way to define a new visit would be to check if the visitor has already been there since 00:00:00 of the current day or not. It would count 23:58 and 00:01 as separate.

Saul 2010-09-21 12:10:25

Yes everything is ok until the third part.. Thats why i made this question. If i have an 24 hour limit, if a user visits at 00:01 pm , and then he visits again at 23:58pm it will only display that he have visited once. Maybe i should make it a hour limit?

Karem 2010-09-21 13:27:35

No, you don't have to do that. Maybe I was not specific enough when I said "1 day". Use UNIX timestamp of mktime() function -- that way you simply check if the previous visit was more than 60 * 60 * 24 seconds ago or not. For output, you can format the UNIX timestamp with date() function. Once you get the logic working properly, then selecting the interval length is a matter of taste or conforming to other specifications if you have any.

Saul 2010-09-21 14:00:36

but he has visited twice, once the first day and once the second day.

Phill Pafford 2010-09-21 20:08:05

what logic? I am getting the logic working properly.. lol, that's why I am asking on how to count it the nicest way, before as a said in my previous comment, the 24 hours limit wont do

Karem 2010-09-21 20:18:35

+1 A:

There are a number of tutorials about 'Your Last Visit'

http://www.tizag.com/phpT/phpcookies.php

Phill Pafford 2010-09-21 20:06:53

This looks like a promising solution - then the only question would be how far in the future to set the cookie expiration to consider "one session". The tutorial uses two months, but I can imagine as short as one hour if that's how Karem wants to count visits.

pjmorse 2010-09-27 21:15:17

it's all up to @karem, not hard to implement that change at all

Phill Pafford 2010-09-28 14:14:11

ansaurus

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PHP: How to make "Latest visit" count nicer

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