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

Just tested. This also works.

session_start();

// Get page name
$page_url = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];

// Create the session ID. Will act as visitor username
if(!isset($_SESSION['id'])){

$_SESSION['id'] = session_id();

// For the visit to the first page
$visit_id = $_SESSION['id'];

}else{

// For subsequent visits to any page
$visit_id = $_SESSION['id'];

}

/******************
Query DB. Insert only one visit per page per session. It means we need a count for each page to get its total visits. Or a count for all records to get site total visits.
************************************/
$query_visits_table = mysqli_query($db_connect, "SELECT * FROM tblcount WHERE (visit_id='$visit_id') AND (page_name='$page_url')");

if(mysqli_num_rows($query_visits_table) > 0){

// Do nothing if this page has been visited during this session

}else{

mysqli_query($db_connect, "INSERT INTO tblcount (visit_id, page_name, visit) VALUES('$visit_id', '$page_url', '1')");

}

// Get site total visits
$query_site_visits = mysqli_query($db_connect, "SELECT * FROM tblcount");

// For a specific page
$query_specific_page_visit = mysqli_query($db_connect, "SELECT * FROM tblcount WHERE page_name='$page_url'");

if(isset($query_site_visits) && isset($query_specific_page_visit)){

$site_total_visits = mysqli_num_rows($query_site_visits);
$specific_page_visit = mysqli_num_rows($query_specific_page_visit);

echo 'Site total visits is '. $site_total_visits . '<br />';

echo 'Total visits for ' . $page_url . ' is ' . $specific_page_visit;

exit();

}

Answer 2

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] . '<br/>';
$views = getViews($pagenumber);
echo '<pre>Viewed ' . print_r($views, true) . ' times</pre>';

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