php code to track page visits

[Len Whistler]

I would like to share a php code that I developed that I think is very usefull. It tracks which of my web pages are visited, the IP address and date. It then writes the info to a txt file called track.txt. Below is a php file called track.php

<?php

$ipaddress = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$date = date ("M dS H:i:s");

$message = "$page _ $ipaddress _ $date\n";


$File = "track.txt";
$Open = fopen($File, "a+");
if ($Open){

fwrite($Open, "$message");
fclose ($Open);
}

?>

And the code below goes into each of my web pages. In this case the "Columbia Brewing Company" page. I only change the title on each page

<?php
     $page ='Columbia Brewing Company';

include "track.php";
include "header.php";
include "nav.php";
    echo "<h1>$page</h1>";
?>

I get the output below on a txt file, which tells me the pages that where visited along with the IP address and date. stubby.ca is always the first page



stubby.ca _ 65.50.18.119 _ Feb 16th 03:04:46
Labatt Brewing Company _ 65.50.18.119 _ Feb 16th 03:04:49
Carling Breweries Ltd. _ 65.50.18.119 _ Feb 16th 03:04:51
O'Keefe Brewing Company _ 65.50.18.119 _ Feb 16th 03:04:54
O'Keefe Brewing Company _ 65.50.18.119 _ Feb 16th 03:04:56
stubby.ca _ 65.50.18.119 _ Feb 16th 03:05:13
O'Keefe Brewing Company _ 65.50.18.119 _ Feb 16th 03:05:17
stubby.ca _ 24.77.175.78 _ Feb 16th 03:42:49
stubby.ca _ 24.101.53.42 _ Feb 16th 05:21:03
stubby.ca _ 12.74.202.78 _ Feb 16th 05:36:47


Leonard Whistler

http://www.stubby.ca

[raf]

any reason why you save the page-titleand not, for instance the filename or adress (which you could do dynamically with
$_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME']
or
$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']
so that you don't need to 'freeze' your pagetitle)

I suppose that the fileadress will be more stable and relevant then the printed title.

Also, what are you planning to do with the logfile? If you plan on importing it into a db, then i would personnaly choose another seperator (like | ) and i would save the datetimevalues in a more universal format (or even the unix-timestamp)

[Len Whistler]

Thanks for the reply raf...


The file name, instead of page title, sounds like a good idea. Later on when I get better at php/mysql I might add it to a DB.

So far it tells me that most people who visit my site do not visit the other pages.



Leonard Whistler

http://www.stubby.ca

[sup]

Beautiful, just what I needed: a simple code that records the IP address of each visitor of each page and the time of the visit, and stores them permanently in a file. You would be surprised how many 'professional' web analytics tools either don't provide the ability to view visitors' IP addresses, or else else limit the record to the last X number of visitors. Thank you so much for this very useful code.