|
Home::CGI
Track your visitors, using PHP
Author : Dennis Pallett
There are many different traffic analysis tools, ranging from
simple counters to complete traffic analyzers. Although there
are some free ones, most of them come with a price tag. Why not
do it yourself? With PHP, you can easily create a log file
within minutes. In this article I will show you how!
Getting the information The most important part
is getting the information from your visitor. Thankfully, this
is extremely easy to do in PHP (or any other scripting language
for that matter). PHP has a special global variable called
$_SERVER which contains several environment variables, including
information about your visitor. To get all the information you
want, simply use the following code: // Getting the
information $ipaddress = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']; $page =
"http://{$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']}{$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']}"; $page .=
iif(!empty($_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']),
"?{$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']}", ""); $referrer =
$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']; $datetime = mktime(); $useragent =
$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']; $remotehost =
@getHostByAddr($ipaddress); As you can see the majority
of information comes from the $_SERVER variable. The mktime()
(http://nl2.php.net/mktime) and getHostByAddr()
(http://nl2.php.net/manual/en/function.gethostbyaddr.php)
functions are used to get additional information about the
visitor.
Note: I used a function in the above example called iif(). You
can get this function at http://www.phpit.ne
t/code/iif-function.
Logging the information Now that you have all
the information you need, it must be written to a log file so
you can later look at it, and create useful graphs and charts.
To do this you need a few simple PHP function, like fopen
(http://www.php.net/fopen) and fwrite
(http://www.php.net/fwrite).
The below code will first create a complete line out of all the
information. Then it will open the log file in "Append" mode,
and if it doesn't exist yet, create it.
If no errors have occurred, it will write the new logline to the
log file, at the bottom, and finally close the log file again.
// Create log line $logline = $ipaddress . '|' . $referrer
. '|' . $datetime . '|' . $useragent . '|' . $remotehost . '|' .
$page . " ";
// Write to log file: $logfile =
'/some/path/to/your/logfile.txt';
// Open the log file in "Append" mode if (!$handle =
fopen($logfile, 'a+')) { die("Failed to open log file"); }
// Write $logline to our logfile. if (fwrite($handle, $logline)
=== FALSE) { die("Failed to write to log file"); }
fclose($handle); Now you've got a fully function logging
module. To start tracking visitors on your website simply
include the logging module into your pages with the include()
function (http://www.php.net/include): include
('log.php'); Okay, now I want to view my log
file After a while you'll probably want to view your
log file. You can easily do so by simply using a standard text
editor (like Notepad on Windows) to open the log file, but this
is far from desired, because it's in a hard-to-read format.
Let's use PHP to generate useful overviews for is. The first
thing that needs to be done is get the contents from the log
file in a variable, like so: // Open log file $logfile =
"G:projectsphpitcontentrack your visitors using phplog.txt";
if (file_exists($logfile)) {
$handle = fopen($logfile, "r"); $log = fread($handle,
filesize($logfile)); fclose($handle); } else { die ("The log
file doesn't exist!"); } Now that the log file is in a
variable, it's best if each logline is in a separate variable.
We can do this using the explode() function
(http://www.php.net/explode), like so: // Seperate each
logline $log = explode(" ", trim($log)); After that it
may be useful to get each part of each logline in a separate
variable. This can be done by looping through each logline, and
using explode again: // Seperate each part in each logline
for ($i = 0; $i < count($log); $i++) { $log[$i] =
trim($log[$i]); $log[$i] = explode('|', $log[$i]); }
Now the complete log file has been parsed, and we're ready to
start generating some interesting stuff.
The first thing that is very easy to do is getting the number of
pageviews. Simply use count() (http://www.phpit.net/count) on
the $log array, and there you have it; echo count($log) .
" people have visited this website."; You can also
generate a complete overview of your log file, using a simple
foreach loop and tables. For example: // Show a table of
the logfile echo '<table>'; echo '<th>IP
Address</th>'; echo '<th>Referrer</th>'; echo
'<th>Date</th>'; echo
'<th>Useragent</th>'; echo '<th>Remote
Host</th>';
foreach ($log as $logline) { echo '<tr>';
echo '<td>' . $logline['0'] . '</td>'; echo
'<td>' . urldecode($logline['1']) . '</td>'; echo
'<td>' . date('d/m/Y', $logline['2']) . '</td>';
echo '<td>' . $logline['3'] . '</td>'; echo
'<td>' . $logline['4'] . '</td>';
echo '</tr>';
}
echo '</table>';
You can also use custom functions to filter out search engines
and crawlers. Or create graphs using PHP/SWF Charts
(http://www.maani.us/charts/index.php). The possibilities are
endless, and you can do all kinds of things!
In Conclusion... In this article I have shown
you have to create a logging module for your own PHP website,
using nothing more than PHP and its built-in functions. To view
the log file you need to parse it using PHP, and then display it
in whatever way you like. It is up to you to create a kick-ass
traffic analyzer.
If you still prefer to use a pre-built traffic analyzer, have a
look at http://www.hotscripts.com.
Spam emails More free articles Related articles
|
More related feeds |
Track Your Visitors Using Php
Now you've got a fully function logging module. To start tracking visitors on your website simply include the logging module into your pages with the include() function (http://www.php.net/include):. include ('log.php'); ...Track your Visitors, using PHP
Material Image, Dennis Pallett shows us how to create a simple PHP log analyzer and how to measure your website's success! Category:PHP Basics Tutorials Author: PHPit.net Date: March 21, 2007. Make Your Business Image Pop With A Twitter Profile Makeover ...
FreeFind Site Search Engine - FreeFind adds a "search this site" feature to your website, making your site easier to use. FreeFind also gives you reports showing what your visitors are searching for, enabling you to improve your site. ... Track This Out TrackyPro v3.4.1 In PDA4x We Trust _ www.pda4x.com
Tracky gives insight in your current situation by means of a large compass, a speed, altitude, slope and even a G-force meter. You can record the track you are walking and edit your favorite Points Of Interest (POIs). ... 16 Kyoto Protocol Nations On Track to Meet Emissions Reductions ...
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.) « Name. « Email Address ... Linux.com :: Set Mantis to track your bugs
Set Mantis to track your bugs. Posted by: Anonymous [ip: 71.29.14.34] on November 14, 2008 05:03 PM. Fantastic article. I hadn't even heard of Mantis, and now I'm planning on using it. Btw, I use eclipse and there is a mylyn integration ... Record File Downloads in Google Analytics Using MooTools
A while back I wrote an article detailing how you can use forced downloads via PHP to track downloads. What if you could get that same data into Google Analytics? Using some simple MooTools and advanced Google Analytics tactics, ... How to configure caching-nameserver (named) in cascading mode | Fedora
Using caching-nameserver. To use your caching-nameserver, open /etc/resolv.conf file and add the following line. nameserver 127.0.0.1. Comment all other lines in the file, so that finally the file looks like ... Track visitors with PHP - QuickPipe
To see the results please navigate to “display_visits.php” in your browser and start to benefit from tracking your visitors. Ok now I’m testing it, it works fine, I hope you will find it useful somewhere in your website. ... BlackBerry’s Storm Presses Into the Touch-Phone Fray | Walt ...
If you want to clean out all tracking cookies from all your Web sites, here are links where you can download three programs that can clean out tracking cookies:. http://www.lavasoftusa.com/products/ad-aware_se_personal.php ...
|
|
|
