Creating a hit counter

[Quicksilver_0]

So I am trying to set up a real basic hit counter for pages. The DB has a tabe called Page_hits that has the fields "page" and "hits." So simple. When it accesses a page ID, it adds one to that page's hit count in the DB. In theory anyway. In practice it just doesn't seem to work. What can you tell from looking at this code:

$Session_name = "default"; 	// The Sessions name, write "default" for default name.
$host = "localhost";						// Your host
$username = "xxxxxxxxx"; 				// Your MySQL username
$password = "xxxxxxxxx"; 			// Your MySQL password
$database = "xxxxxx_content"; 			// Your Database of choice
$views = "page_views";

mysql_connect ($host, $username, $password) OR DIE ("Could not connect to MySQL");
mysql_select_db($database) OR DIE ("Can't select database.");

// Set up the article hit counter
$hits = mysql_result("SELECT hits FROM $views WHERE page='$page'");  //retrieve current hits
$hits= $hits + 1;  //increment by one
mysql_query("UPDATE $views SET hits='$hits' WHERE page='$page'");  //update DB to reflect new view

mysql_close();

echo "<p>Views: " . $hits . "</p>";

[poison]

hi
you don't specify the fieldname in mysql_result() ...
do an
var_dump($hits);
after mysql_result() to see what I mean
use
mysql_result(<query>, 0, <fieldname>);
the easiest way to increment the counter would be

mysql_query("UPDATE {$views} SET hits=hits+1 WHERE page='" . mysql_escape_string($page) . "'");

so you just increment the counter with the query =)

regards

[Quicksilver_0]

Okay, I tried to simplify it a little. Still nothing. Here is what I put together from your advice nad some other help I got:

mysql_query("Update '$views' SET hits=hits+1 WHERE page='$page'");  //update DB to reflect new view
$hits = mysql_query("SELECT hits FROM '$views' WHERE page='$page'");  //retrieve current hits

Still nothing. The code prints "Views: " to the HTML, so obviously the variable is not being assigned a value. I am pretty sure that I need to use that mysql_result function in there somewhere, but I can't figure out how to implement it and I have yet to find something that explains it well enough for me to put it to the correct use. Would it be something like:

$hits = mysql_result('$page',1)

[drew010]

if you have
$hits = mysql_query("SELECT hits FROM '$views' WHERE page='$page'");

then to view them you will want to do
$count = mysql_result($hits, 0);

echo $count;

rows start at 0 so in your code where you put 1, it looked for a row that doesnt exist.

[Quicksilver_0]

mysql_query("Update '$views' SET hits=hits+1 WHERE page='$page'");  //update DB to reflect new view
$hits = mysql_query("SELECT hits FROM '$views' WHERE page='$page'");  //retrieve current hits
$count = mysql_result($hits, 0); //this is line 68

This results in the error:
Warning: mysql_result(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/xxxxxx/public_html/view.php on line 68

[drew010]

echo mysql_error(); right above the mysql_result line and see if it prints anything.

[laserlight]

mysql_query("UPDATE `$views` SET hits=hits+1 WHERE page='$page'");
$hits = mysql_query("SELECT hits FROM `$views` WHERE page='$page'");
$count = mysql_result($hits, 0);

MySQL table (and column) names should be enclosed in backticks, not single quotes.
It is the values that should be enclosed in single quotes.
If the table name isnt a reserved word, then the backticks arent absolutely necessary.

[Quicksilver_0]

Hooray to laserlight. Using the backticks is what fixed the problem. Seems to work fine now. I will work to make it a little more reliable (prevent reloading counts and add in error checking if a page is accessed and doesn't have an ID) from here, but this was the most important part. Gracias to everyone.

Final code:

mysql_query("Update `$views` SET hits=hits+1 WHERE page='$page'");  //update DB to reflect new view
$hits = mysql_query("SELECT hits FROM `$views` WHERE page='$page'");  //retrieve current hits
$count = mysql_result($hits, 0);