Unique hit counter

[Prodigal Son]

I'm making some dynamic web pages and each of them has a hit counter, but it's not unique. I just have the value stored in the db. And each time someone accesses the page, I do an update to the db and increment it by one. Some people use cookies for a unique hit counter right? But if you have many dynamic pages, would you really make a cookie for each page? What's the best way to make a unique hit counter for dynamic pages?

[F1Fan]

I created one that has a db table with one column that stores the feature accessed (the page) and another that has the count.

 

<?php
	$query = "UPDATE feature_count SET c = (c+1) WHERE f = '$f'";
	$result = $db->query($query);
	if ($db->affectedRows()==0){
		$query = "INSERT INTO feature_count (f, c) VALUES ('$f', 1)";
		$result = $db->query($query);
	}
?>

[dennismonsewicz]

Well the problem with "unique hit counters" is that they are never a true unique counter.

 

You seem to be on your way by calculating the information using a DB but you may have to get into capturing IP addresses as well...

[Prodigal Son]

So its not a good idea to use cookies? (I also remember reading that there is only 20 cookies per domain??) How about sessions?