ip + counter help

Anon

Does anyone know of a text counter that logs the IP addresses so you can't spam the counter. I saw ones that do this, but it only holds the last IP, so if another IP visits it, and the person before refreshes it, he can still spam it, but its a little slower.

If you know of a counter, or can make one, please send the url or code.

Thanks!

Anon

I'm not sure of any code, but you can use the global variable $REMOTE_ADDR to get the IP address of the visitor.

---JH

Anon

Why would you want to do that? Have you any clue
how many nodes are currently behind NAT or proxies
or AOL or...? Assuming a one-to-one correspondence
between IP address and almost anything is a very
poor idea these days.

Anon

Just use fwrite to write the IP and a newline/space to a file.

When the counter is used, use an ereg to search for that exact IP address.

It's not foolproof, as if people really want to spam your counter, they can. It's just harder...but now not all hits will be counted from legitimate people.

Anon

If you decide to do this, though, you are going to get a count for that one IP address only once...period. The client could return the next day and if you don't watch it, you won't register their hit as legitimate.

Counters are eye candy, they really don't mean much at all once you get into their nuts and bolts. As with your case, they can be easily spammed, they rate the hits instantaneously instead of discriminating against legitimate hits (you set the time limit, but a legit hit is normally considered 20-30 minutes between hits by a single client). A hit counter also shows hits for that page, not the site. If it is on your entry page and everyone bookmarks a page three layers down, you never register them on your counter because they never come there anymore.

Again, hit counters are nice for the eye, but for analysis of web traffic, use the server logs.

Jim H.

Anon

It looks like this:

<?
$cfile = "counter-data.inc";
$localip = "127.0.0.1";
$serverip = "127.0.0.1";
//There is no need to modify anything below.
if (file_exists ($cfile)) {
$fp = fopen ($cfile,"r+");
$data = fgets ($fp,25);
$ip = chop (substr($data,0,15));
$count = substr($data,15);
if ($REMOTE_ADDR == $localip or $REMOTE_ADDR == $serverip)
$np = $ip;
else
$np = $REMOTE_ADDR;
if ($np != $ip)
$count += 1;
rewind ($fp);
fputs ($fp,substr($np." ",0,15).$count);
fclose ($fp);
echo $count;
}
else {
$fp = fopen($cfile,"w");
$np = $REMOTE_ADDR;
$count = "1";
fputs ($fp,substr($np." ",0,15).$count);
fclose ($fp);
echo $count;
}
?>

Anon

If you want it to be more accurate, you can use setcookie() + $REMOTE_ADDR