counting length of session

[Swedie]

Hey

I'm doing a Stats Script and need to add Average Stay of each user. How would you go ahead and do this? Would you use Sessions? Cookies? or what?

They way I add a hit to the MySQL database is through a "picture" (picture through a PHP file). Problem for me with pulling session id is that the session id changes every time this image is called.

Please help me out. Tell me how you normally do this.

Thanks

[dbchip2000]

You can't know really (I don't believe), how long they stay at a page because they can always close the window and you won't know. I suggest you create a database table with fields such as their IP Address, originally seen (datetime), and lastseen (datetime). Every time the user calls a picture from your PHP script, it will query the database to see if the IP Address ($_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"]) exists already in the database, if it doesn't it will insert a record, with their IP, MySQL NOW() for both datetimes. If the record does exists, you should update the lastseen.
Then you can create a script to find the differences for the IP Addresses. You should also be aware that many providers offer DHCP and people's computer's IP will change every so often.
You can't keep sessions or cookies with pictures I am pretty sure. Hope this will give you a start

[Swedie]

so that means I need to create an extra table just for pageviews?

I've seen some statistics scripts grab some other info than the IP, such as the ISP domain info. How do one do that, and why do they do that? is it if the IP is not grabable?

thanks for the help.