Check how many times an article is viewed?

[Mr Chris]

Hello,

 

I have a counter on my page which increments a column in my database every time a story on my site is viewed:

 

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM stories WHERE story_id=".$id);
  $row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
  $i = $row['my_count'];
  $i++;
  $query = "UPDATE stories SET read_count = '$i' WHERE story_id=".$id;
  $result = mysql_query($query);

 

Is there anyway I could make it a bit better to not allow for things like a user sitting there and hitting refresh 15 times, and bots visiting the page, things like that really?

 

Thanks

[Maq]

You can use sessions to ensure they are only counted once.  Not sure about the bots issue.  For crawlers, which I'm not even sure if they would be counted, you would have to conditionally detect them.  Try Google, something like: Detect Crawlers.