internal link tracking

[xraqdude]

Somewhat a noob here...need help with creating a means for tracking internal links on a website.
Let's say that a search by a visitor results in a list on results.php, where each item on the list is a link that has been assigned an ID number. Items listed on results.php have links that look like 'href=itemdetail.php?ID=xx' (where itemdetail.php performs a query and displays data from the db based on that ID number). The links look like itemdetail.php?ID=100. The database query for itemdetail works just fine, so that's not an issue.
What I need to be able to do is track and write to a table each time the link on results.php is clicked for a specific ID number - in other words, anytime a visitor clicks the link 'itemdetail.php?ID=xx', I'd like to increment a counter in a table (and possibly write a timestamp) for that specific ID number....I would think that this could be accomplished using sessions, but I know little about session management (currently)....any help is greatly appreciated.

[drawmack]

you don't even need sessions.

Step 1: create a table like this:

link_track
    id --> auto_increment
    page_id --> bigint
    when --> bigint

Step 2: at the top of showdetail.php put this

<?php
$sql  = "INSERT INTO link_track (page_id,when) VALUES ";
$sql .= "(" . $_GET['id'] . "," . time() . ")";
mysql_query($sql);
?>

That's it you're done. Of course now you'll need to write a script to display this information, but that's all there is to storing it.