PHP session for tracking unique page views

Question

I want to use sessions to track unique page views. Not a very robust method, I know, but sufficient for what I want to do.

On the first page load the session variabl

Answer 1

Problems:

1. You are updating in tblCount EACH time, because your session is closed each time your script finishes. SO: Put the session_start()call as the FIRST LINE in code.
2. It's not permitted to set an integer as $_SESSION variable. So if you set $_SESSION[$pagenumber] = 'something', then you gain the following notice:

( ! ) Notice: Unknown: Skipping numeric key 1 in Unknown on line 0

Quite... not understandable. For details see this answer.

Solution:

Add your $pagenumber as index in an array (here pagenumbers) and that array inside the $_SESSION variable. No notice anymore.

session_start();

$pagenumber = 1;

if (!isset($_SESSION['pagenumbers'])) {
    $_SESSION['pagenumbers'] = array();
}

if (!isset($_SESSION['pagenumbers'][$pagenumber])) {
    updateViews($pagenumber);
    $_SESSION['pagenumbers'][$pagenumber] = $pagenumber;
}

echo 'Page number: ' . $_SESSION['pagenumbers'][$pagenumber] . '
';
$views = getViews($pagenumber);
echo '
Viewed ' . print_r($views, true) . ' times
';

Note: I used my functions to test. They just replace your db-processing code.