What is the best way to count page views in PHP/MySQL?

Question

And by best I mean most efficient, right now placing this on my post.php file is the only thing I can think of:

$query = mysql_query(\" UPDATE posts SET view         


        

Answer 1

If memcache is an option in your server environment, here's another cool way to sample, but also keep up with the precise number (unlike my other answer):

function recordPostPageView($page_id) {
    $memcache = new Memcached(); // you could also pull this instance from somewhere else, if you want a bit more efficiency*

    $key = "Counter for Post {$page_id}";

    if(!$memcache->get($key)) {
        $memcache->set($key, 0);
    }

    $new_count = $memcache->increment($key);

    // you could uncomment the following if you still want to notify mysql of the value occasionally
    /*
    $notify_mysql_interval = 100;
    if($new_count % $notify_mysql_interval == 0) {
        $query = mysql_query("UPDATE posts SET views = {$new_count} WHERE id = '{$page_id}' ");
        // execute query, etc
    }
    */

    return $new_count;
}

• And don't mind purists crying foul about Singletons. Or you could pass it into this function, if you're more purist than pragmatist :)