Resetting fields...

Residue

Does anyone know of a way, I could set a field in a table to reset to "0" everyday. Basically I'm creating a bandwidth controller, and trying to make it so everyone can only download 10 files per day...when they download a file it will update a field called downloads_today and add 1 to it each time.

So when it reaches 10 I'll try and make it so that user wont be able to download again today.

How do I make it so the field downloads_today knows to reset itself every day though?

laserlight

That will probably need a cron table or something.

A possible alternative is to store the time of the last such operation.

When the user comes round again, this is checked, and the values updated correspondingly, after which the new time is saved.

Residue

What is a cron table, and how would I use it in this situation?

tbach2

a cron job is a shell script that is run hourly, weekly, everyminute, etc. If you're not the administrator of the host machine you're probably out of luck. I like laserlight's alt suggestion.

I would amend it slightly: make a field to hold the date (not time) and then you can UPDATE ... WHERE user=$user AND date=$date

Of course, you would need to check first if there is a record, create it if not.

also, your script should do housekeeping to delete old records.

HTH

Residue

Ah...I think i understand.

$today = date("j");

Everytime someone logs in, I'll make it so it does this:

 UPDATE <table> SET today=$today WHERE id=<the persons online id>

And then, I'll add an if.

if ($today > today > $today) {
UPDATE <table> SET downloads_today='0' WHERE id=<the persons online id>[/

Naturally it's flawed as it is, but in theory would that work ok?

Residue

I still need help, if anyone's willing to teach me like a 6 year old.

tbach2

when confronted with a big problem, break it down into manageable steps:

figure out how to make a field increment. Something like "update ... set count = count+1 where something" (That may or may not work; play around with it til it does) or, insert a new record for each visit and tally up the visits...
figure out how you will uniquely identify each user... log in? IP?

break it into enough small pieces, and it'll happen 🙂

Residue

Ok I think I nearly have this thing sorted out, I was just wondering if anyone could correct my usage of this:

if ($today<$online->today<$today) {

tbach2

that's kind of a bizarre if statement... what exactly are you trying to do with it? spell it out for me.

Residue

Basically...I'm going to store the day (not the time, nor full date) in a field.

So:

$today = date("j");

And when a user logs in, if the field "today" isn't what $today is it will reset the "downloads_today" field back to 0...

I'm trying to do it like this

if ($today<$online->today<$today) {
		      $mysql->Query("UPDATE ibf_members SET today=$today WHERE id='$online->user_id'");
                  $mysql->Query("UPDATE ibf_members SET downloads_today='0' WHERE id='$online->user_id'");

$online->today is equal to the current field "today" for the user that just logged in.

I want it so if $today is bigger or smaller than the field "today" then it will run those queries. (basically this is just the way of finding out if it's a different day than yesterday without using cron jobs that were mentioned earlier)

The problem is only with the:

if ($today<$online->today<$today)

part, I've tried it by changing that to something more common and it's worked fine.

Hope you have a clue what I'm talking about. You've helped me get this far anyways.

tbach2

OK, I see... You surprised me a bit with that object in the if clause.

what you're trying to do with this snippet is to reset the count of logins when the day changes. You're about to run into a problem, though: will $online->today and $today ever be different? Hmmm.....

I don't think we have the database thought out enough yet. We should be able to make the database do a lot of the work. First, let's ask some questions...

You obviously have an object that is taking care of logins. Will that meet our needs or do we need a new table. Since I don't know what's in the login table, I'm going to go with a new one.

What do we need to know? we need to know who logged in and when.

My first suggestion was off-the-cuff, and frankly it's not the easiest way to do it. What if you had a table that recorded user_id and date_accessed. insert a record every time. What can we find out with just this little bit of info?

You can find out count() of times user has accessed today. (something like select count(id) from table where user_id=$online->id and date=$today) That's really all we wanted, wasn't it? If the maximum number of times is exceeded, then shut the script down.

Residue

will $online->today and $today ever be different

Yes, as the today field is only ever updated when they are different.

It's hard to explain, and you probably are right...but would you know a correct way of showing:

if ($today<$online->today<$today) {

If for no other reason to explain to me why it won't work...

I was thinking to seperate the "if" statements, that both do the same thing, but one of them is

if ($online->today<$today) {

and the other is

if ($online->today>$today) {

Because the problem with it seems to be the fact that I'm using a double crocodile. (i really forget the name of those little things, so i'll revert to what I learned them as when I was like 10)

In theory online->today and $today will be the same, but when a new day comes round and $today no longer equals online->today...it will reset the the downloads_today field, and change the "today" field to what it should be.

tbach2

I'm going on the assumption that $online->today will update when that person logs on; hence when they hit the page, $online->today will equal $today... unless they log in just a few minutes before midnight.

I've never used two comparisons in an if() before; I don't know if its legal or not. But at any rate, that statement will never be true, since you're saying that $online->today must be BOTH less than and greater than $today.

IMHO, it's time to ditch that idea altogether; rather go with a log of logins. Then count the logins and go from there. Much simpler, you don't have to worry about incrementing a field with an update, and the only housekeeping you need to do is to occasionally delete old records 🙂