Strange MYSQL Counter Problem (Firefox vs. IE)

[djcochran]

I've created a simple hit counter on for my site, but I've noticed a strange problem. For some reason, it will increment correctly in IE, but in Firefox it sometimes goes up by 2. Why is it doing this??

 

<?php
// Connects to your Database
mysql_connect("localhost", "xxxxx", "xxxxx") or die(mysql_error());
mysql_select_db("student5") or die(mysql_error());

//Adds one to the counter
mysql_query("UPDATE counters SET num=num + 1 WHERE name='count'") or die("Update query failed: " . mysql_error());

//Retreives the current count
$query = "SELECT num FROM counters";
$result = mysql_query($query) or die("Select query failed: " . mysql_error());
$count = mysql_fetch_row(mysql_query("SELECT num FROM counters WHERE name='count'"));
?>

[PFMaBiSmAd]

Because FF has a feature (bug) where it will request a page twice (wasting your bandwidth and submitting data twice) when it wants to apply the default character encoding that the user has set, despite the fact that it already has requested the page and should be able to use what it already has (lazy Mozilla programmers.)

 

You must use a session to detect and prevent duplicate page requests.

[.josh]

has the universe been turned upside down? That sounds like something IE would be guilty of.

[jackpf]

Wow, I never knew that. Does this still occur when you have default UTF-8 encoding do you know?

[PFMaBiSmAd]

I originally found a post on the mozilla site that mentioned this (cannot find it now.) The feature has been present in a number of FF versions.

 

Upon just searching, there are apparently a number of different reasons (all outside of your control, which is why you must detect duplicate page requests on the server) why FF requests a page twice -

 

Firebug debugging,

empty src=".." urls,

applying default character encoding (that is either different than the page or when the page has none specified.)

[PFMaBiSmAd]

Found the thread - http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php/topic,216715.msg992061.html#msg992061

[jackpf]

Oooh right, it's only when you don't have a char set defined. Oh well, I have one anyway so that's ok.