MySQL hit counter... what's the norm?

[Dr_Evil2]

Hey all, I just finished making my text file based hit counter, only to find that the server is screwing around with it somehow, and so I've decided to make one using MySQL. I know several ways that you could do it, and also know the code you could use, but was wondering what the usual way of doing it is. I don't want any information stored about the visitor, just a hit counter with the No. of visitors. Very simple. Whats the method usually used when making one with MySQL?

Thanx in advance, Dr.Evil.

[greg252]

I don't know of any "usual" way of doing it, I just what I needed:
wrote a function stored outside of the web root that takes 1 argument - the page identifier (since I am adding and deleting pages all of the time). When the page is loaded, it calls the function which stores page, timestamp, ip address.
That's all I needed.

You might want to write a report generator that clears the db an writes static html pages. I'm still working on statistical analysis of pages so I can clear out the 5 megs of page tracking data.

[magnafix]

You might also look at what other people have done:

http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/Counters/index.html