Views Today - mysql table?

[Dolemite50]

Hi,
I currently have a page that stores profiles. One piece it stores is a counter called bpcounter that increments by one every time a page is viewed. I then echo "PROFILE VIEWS = $bpcounter".

This works fine, but now I would like to add a feature of views today. I thought of building a seperate table called todays_views and storing profileID, todaysViewsCounter and viewDate for that profile. The problem is, I dont want to waste alot of resources on storing information beyond today. In other words, how would I get it to just store values for that day and then refresh or overwrite to start the next day.

Also I currently use datetime. Would this job be better suited for a date field since time wont be a factor?

Thanks alot for any help or advice.

[devinemke]

my suggestion is to add 2 new fileds to your table: timestamp(TIMESTAMP 8) and daycount(INT). timestamp fields in mySQL are automatically updated with every INSERT or UPDATE operation with the current date and time. all you need to do is check the current time with the last timestamp and update the daycount either by adding 1 or resetting back to 1. here's an example:

// let's look at profile #123
$result = mysql_query('SELECT * FROM profiles WHERE profile_id = 123');
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
if ($row['timestamp'] == date('Ymd')) {$new_daycount = $row['daycount'] + 1;}
else {$new_daycount = 1;}
$result = mysql_query("UPDATET profiles SET daycount = $new_daycount WHERE profile_id = 123");

[Dolemite50]

Hey,
Thank you so very much, I'll try it now.

[Dolemite50]

Thanks alot divinemke, that worked like a champ!