Track your visitors, using PHP by Dennis Pallett
There are many different traffic analysis tools, ranging from simple counters to
complete traffic analyzers. Although there are some free ones, most of them
come with a price tag. Why not do it yourself? With PHP, you can easily create
a log file within minutes. In this article I will show you how!
<strong>Getting the information</strong> The most important part is
getting the information from your visitor. Thankfully, this is extremely easy
to do in PHP (or any other scripting language for that matter). PHP has a
special global variable called $_SERVER which contains several environment
variables, including information about your visitor. To get all the information
you want, simply use the following code:
// Getting the information
$ipaddress = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$page = http://{$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']}{$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']};
$page .= iif(!empty($_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']), "?{$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']}",
"");
$referrer = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
$datetime = mktime();
$useragent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
< P > $remotehost= @getHostByAddr($ipaddress); < /P > < P > As you can see the
majority of information comes from the $_SERVER variable. The mktime() (http://nl2.php.net/mktime)
and getHostByAddr() (http://nl2.php.net/manual/en/function.gethostbyaddr.php)
functions are used to get additional information about the visitor.
Note: I used a function in the above example called iif(). You can get this
function at
http://www.phpit.net/code/iif-function.
<strong>Logging the information</strong> Now that you have all the
information you need, it must be written to a log file so you can later look at
it, and create useful graphs and charts. To do this you need a few simple PHP
function, like fopen (http://www.php.net/fopen)
and fwrite (http://www.php.net/fwrite).
The below code will first create a complete line out of all the information.
Then it will open the log file in "Append" mode, and if it doesn't exist yet,
create it.
If no errors have occurred, it will write the new logline to the log file, at
the bottom, and finally close the log file again.
// Create log line
$logline = $ipaddress . '|' . $referrer . '|' . $datetime . '|' . $useragent .
'|' . $remotehost . '|' . $page . " ";
// Write to log file: $logfile = '/some/path/to/your/logfile.txt';
// Open the log file in "Append" mode
if (!$handle = fopen($logfile, 'a+')) { die("Failed to open log file"); }
// Write $logline to our logfile.
if (fwrite($handle, $logline) === FALSE) { die("Failed to write to log file"); }
fclose($handle);
< P > Now you've got a fully function logging module. To start tracking
visitors on your website simply include the logging module into your pages with
the include() function (http://www.php.net/include):
include ('log.php');
Okay, now I want to view my log file After a while you'll
probably want to view your log file. You can easily do so by simply using a
standard text editor (like Notepad on Windows) to open the log file, but this
is far from desired, because it's in a hard-to-read format.
Let's use PHP to generate useful overviews for is. The first thing that needs
to be done is get the contents from the log file in a variable, like so:
// Open log file $logfile
=
< PRE > "G:projectsphpitcontentrack your visitors using phplog.txt";
if (file_exists($logfile)) {
$handle = fopen($logfile, "r"); $log = fread($handle, filesize($logfile));
fclose($handle); } else { die ("The log file doesn't exist!"); } Now
that the log file is in a variable, it's best if each logline is in a separate
variable. We can do this using the explode() function (http://www.php.net/explode),
like so:
// Seperate each logline
$log = explode("
", trim($log));
After that it may be useful to get each part of each logline in a separate
variable. This can be done by looping through each logline, and using explode
again:
// Seperate each part in each logline
for ($i = 0; $i < count($log); $i++) {
$log[$i] = trim($log[$i]);
$log[$i] = explode('|', $log[$i]);
}
Now the complete log file has been parsed, and we're ready to start generating
some interesting stuff.
The first thing that is very easy to do is getting the number of pageviews.
Simply use count() (http://www.phpit.net/count)
on the $log array, and there you have it;
echo count($log) . " people have visited this website.";
You can also generate a complete overview of your log file, using a simple
foreach loop and tables. For example:
// Show a table of the logfile
echo '<table>';
echo '<th>IP Address</th>';
echo '<th>Referrer</th>';
echo '<th>Date</th>';
echo '<th>Useragent</th>';
echo '<th>Remote Host</th>';
foreach ($log as $logline) {
echo '<tr>';
echo '<td>' . $logline['0'] . '</td>';
echo '<td>' . urldecode($logline['1']) . '</td>';
echo '<td>' . date('d/m/Y', $logline['2']) . '</td>';
echo '<td>' . $logline['3'] . '</td>';
echo '<td>' . $logline['4'] . '</td>';
echo '</tr>';
}
echo '</table>';
You can also use custom functions to filter out search engines and crawlers. Or
create graphs using PHP/SWF Charts (http://www.maani.us/charts/index.php).
The possibilities are endless, and you can do all kinds of things!
<strong>In Conclusion...</strong> In this article I have shown you
have to create a logging module for your own PHP website, using nothing more
than PHP and its built-in functions. To view the log file you need to parse it
using PHP, and then display it in whatever way you like. It is up to you to
create a kick-ass traffic analyzer.
If you still prefer to use a pre-built traffic analyzer, have a look at
http://www.hotscripts.com.
About the Author
Dennis Pallett is a young tech writer, with much experience in ASP, PHP and
other web technologies. He enjoys writing, and has written several articles and
tutorials. To find more of his work, look at his websites:
http://www.phpit.net,
http://www.aspit.net and
http://www.ezfaqs.com
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