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By using this article, you agree to the following terms...
1) You may use
this article in your own programs (and may compile it into a program and distribute it in compiled format for languages that allow it) freely and with no charge.
2) You MAY NOT redistribute this article (for example to a web site) without written permission from the original author. Failure to do so is a violation of copyright laws.
3) You may link to this article from another website, but ONLY if it is not wrapped in a frame.
4) You will abide by any additional copyright restrictions which the author may have placed in the article or article's description. | Ok, so you want to find out who has been visiting your site do you? Well, luckily this is very easy using PERL 5.0! As long as you have CGI support (a cgi-bin) on your web page, and a space for a file (probaly wont be very big unless you experience like 5000 users a day!)
Anyways, lets start off the code with your general declaration...
******************************************
#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
******************************************
This will enable PERL on your web page.
Now, what do we want to log? Well, let's log the total amount of visitors, as well as each visitors IP Adress. Then you can compare how many unique visitors you have, plus it is nice and easy.
******************************************
$USERIP = $ENV{'REMOTE_ADDR'};
******************************************
Ok, that was painless enough. But we want to find out how many total visitors we have had, this is a little more difficult. You must have a file *LOCATED IN YOUR CGI-BIN* called Counter.DAT (for the purpose of this tutorial at least). When you create it make sure the value of the file (the text inside) only is
0
No quotes or anything else, this is just a starting value that lets you add 1 to it each time the user views the page. Now, we need to open this file and get the value (how many views were had before this user came.)
******************************************
$fil = "counter.dat";
open(UFILE2, "$fil") || die "Error: Counter File Missing\n";
$Counterval = <UFILE2>;
close (UFILE2);
$Counterval =+ 1;
******************************************
Ok a little more complicated, but still basically easy. We just opened the file and said whatever was in it can assume the variable $Counterval. So if the file read 5, $Counterval would equal 5. After we got it, we said that it was equal to itself, so again to understand lets patch in 5.
$Counterval = $Counterval + 1
is equal to
5 = 5 + 1
or 6! It just tells it to add 1 to itself. Ok now lets write it back into the file...
(Note: I am writing, not appending. I want to overwrite the previous variable.)
******************************************
open(UFILE3, ">$fil") || die "Error: Counter File Missing!\n";
print UFILE3 $Counterval;
close (UFILE3);
******************************************
Ok. Now we want to save their IP address, so lets create a file called IPLOG.dat. This will hold all our IP's, again to make this tutorial easier, create a file called iplog.dat yourself, but leave it blank. Since we are using the APPEND method, it doesn't have to have a value in it to start out with. Remember, the variable $USERIP was the ip address (look at the top of this tutorial!), so we need to append this into a new line in the iplog.dat file.
******************************************
$fil = "iplog.dat";
open(UFILE4, ">>$fil") || die "Error: IPLOG File Missing!\n";
print UFILE4 "$USERIP\n";
close (UFILE4);
******************************************
Great! Lets overview this. First we replaced the old variable $fil with the new file we need to open. Then we opened it and APPENDED (>>) to it with their ip. Notice I used a \n (new line) return at the end, this is to make it alot easier to read, and organize it so that each ip is on one line. Simple enough right? And the user never noticed anything! You can track alot of stuff, that may be useful to your sales, or just cool to know! Anyways, a few tips to remember:
1) Make sure all files are in the CGI-BIN directory and that your host supports CGI
2) Make sure that all files are set to CHMOD 755 (Most FTP programs will set this upon request or servers will automatically). If you are unsure, just try the program. If it gives an error then set your CHMOD.
Anyways, here is the source code without any breaks. Enjoy, its free for grabs, and free for modification! Thanks. - Alex
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#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
$USERIP = $ENV{'REMOTE_ADDR'};
$fil = "counter.dat";
open(UFILE2, "$fil") || die "Error: Counter File Missing\n";
$Counterval = <UFILE2>;
close (UFILE2);
$Counterval =+ 1;
open(UFILE3, ">$fil") || die "Error: Counter File Missing!\n";
print UFILE3 $Counterval;
close (UFILE3);
$fil = "iplog.dat";
open(UFILE4, ">>$fil") || die "Error: IPLOG File Missing!\n";
print UFILE4 "$USERIP\n";
close (UFILE4);
***********************************************
Thanks guys, I am just starting with tutorials, I will be doing alot of new ones in CGI (Perl 5) and Visual Basic hopefully. Bye!
UPDATED
I fixed some of the problems I was having with the HTML code, and no you don't *need* to use flock command, only if you have a VERY high traffic site. | |
Other 1 submission(s) by this author
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| Other User Comments |
9/13/2000 5:31:46 AM:rob
use < and > for the < > signs.
i
though you had to flock this type of
file to avoid to instances acess the
file at the same time.
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9/22/2000 8:56:16 PM:Ian Ippolito
Nicely done tutorial. Very easy to
understand!
Ian
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9/25/2000 11:36:46 AM:PaC
you forgot to use flock()
second you
use ++ not =+ and if you were doing =+
it should be +=
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10/2/2000 2:22:59 AM:skitz
Alex smells kinda funny, but at least i
understand the tutorial.:-P
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10/11/2000 3:07:18 PM:aguy
This is the most powerful and easy to
use Perl code example I've used n a
long time! Thanks, alex!
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10/16/2000 7:53:17 PM:robp
i like this code alot. it worked
perfect! :-) go alex!
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3/22/2001 5:05:33 PM:Mark Hill
Good tutorial. Nice & relaxed :-D ...
More!
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4/6/2001 11:33:07 PM:Sakatius
Thanks!
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4/6/2001 11:33:44 PM:Sakatius
Thanks Alex.
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4/8/2001 7:30:28 PM:Hmm
Its ok code, I probably would have done
it a little different so it is not as
long and you could record which visitor
had which ip and what time they came at
:-)
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6/19/2001 12:11:28 AM:damian
It would probably be wise to check for
errors when closing the files. Is it
really necessary to open that many
files anyway? You could just put in one
flat text file delimitered by a pipe or
something. It isn't worth setting $fil
all those times either if it just going
to change in a second. Instead, just
hardcode it--saves space.
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7/26/2001 9:18:15 AM:TheHumanTrashcan
hi, nice tutorial, but is there
suppposed to be some sort of link in my
webpage to this cgi script, or
something?? Does the script work just
by being in the cgi-bin??
Thanks
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11/10/2001 5:43:13 PM:HyPeR
rob.. it's < and > [i'm not sure
if it used that as html or not, but if
it did.. there's ;'s (semicolans) after
the t's]
TheHumanTrashcan.. nice
name lol.. i'm not positive how to do
this.. i'm new at cgi/perl.. but i
think you put <img
src="/cgi-bin/counter.cgi" width="1"
height="1"> on the page you want the
counter to be on if you want it to be
invisable... you'd need to have the
script as "counter.cgi" and it'd have
to be in your cgi-bin directory [ex.
yoursite.com/cgi-bin/] but maybe this
is .pl or whatever.. i'm not sure..
like i said.. i'm new to perl :)
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12/29/2001 11:37:47 PM:Jyothika
Hi alex..
good code.
Jyo
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7/13/2002 2:55:26 AM:Dax Ahweng
what about dynamic ip addresses, i can
be seen as two different users if i log
off and back on, i may get another
address cause mine are dynamic...
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7/28/2002 7:57:03 PM:Akujin
Isn't a counter script kind of
worthless if the user has to open the
perl script before anything is
recorded?
How do i make it so that
when a user opens my homepage (html) it
records the hit? Also, how can i
display the current hit count on my
homepage?
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7/28/2002 7:59:58 PM:Akujin
The idea (just to make sure this is
clear) is that i don't care how many
people open "counter.pl" i want to know
how many people open "index.html"
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3/6/2003 8:01:00 AM:
Wrong. You do need flock(). I have
seen so many medium sites burned by
this. What you're saying is that you
don't need to do it the right way if
you're a small site.
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