How to track pageviews without thrashing the MySQL DB

Question

I am trying to track pageviews in MySQL DB using the following query:

\"UPDATE $table SET pageviews = pageviews + 1 WHERE page_id = 1\"

This is fine

Answer 1

I would use memcached to store the count, and then sync it with the database on a cron...

// Increment
$page_id = 1;
$memcache = new Memcache();
$memcache->connect('localhost', 11211);

if (!$memcache->get('page_' . $page_id)) {
    $memcache->set('page_' . $page_id, 1);
}
else {
    $memcache->increment('page_' . $page_id, 1);
}

// Cron
if ($pageviews = $memcache->get('page_' . $page_id)) {
    $sql = "UPDATE pages SET pageviews = pageviews + " . $pageviews . " WHERE page_id = " . $page_id;
    mysql_query($sql);
    $memcache->delete('page_' . $page_id);
}