PHP Daily Counter

[imperium2335]

Hi,

 

I can't think how to make a counter which goes up during the day, and when a new day starts it gets reset to 0.

 

How can I do this without relying on visitors to the site to run the script?

 

Cheers,

 

Tom.

[Adam]

If you're able to set up a cron job, you can easily call a Shell file once a day at midnight that will truncate the table you store the counter value in - or the file if it's file based.

[Psycho]

Not sure exactly how you plan to use this counter. But, you could also have the counter determined dynamically in the code. For example, if you wanted the counter to start at 0 and increase by 1 every 15 minutes you could do something like this:

 

$counter = floor((date('G')*60 + date('i')) / 15);

[Adam]

Way I perceived it was a 'hits today' kind of counter.

[Psycho]

Way I perceived it was a 'hits today' kind of counter.

 

Hmm...then I'm not sure how to interpret this statement

How can I do this without relying on visitors to the site to run the script?

How would you increment a hit counter without relying on visitors to the site?

 

IF the OP is only asking how to reset the counter without relying on visitors to the site it might make sense.

 

Even so, it would be helpful to know how he is storing the hit counter. Rather than running a cron job I would suggest storing the date along with the counter. Then the counter could be reset each day the first time it is incremented.

[Adam]

Oh yeah, now I've reread it can see what you mean. Have to see what the OP says..

[imperium2335]

Hi, thanks for your replies.

 

I have gone for the option of having a browser open on our server which refreshes the page and runs the script ever 10 seconds. Is working great so this problem is solved

[Psycho]

I have gone for the option of having a browser open on our server which refreshes the page and runs the script ever 10 seconds.

 

Really? That seems like a very poor method of doing something such as this. If the browser on the server crashes (or starts consuming gobs of memory due to a memory leak) you will have problems. If you were to provide a little more detail as to how the counter operates we can provide a much more elegant solution.

[imperium2335]

Hi,

 

Basically when someone completes an online form, a counter goes up by one in a mysql database. It then resets to 0 at midnight and an email is sent to my marketing guy and he can see how many enquiries we got for that day.

 

Cheers,

 

Tom.

[jcbones]

Does this site reside on a linux server?

 

If so, make a php file.

php file

<?php 
include('mysql_config.php');
$sql = "SELECT `hits` FROM `form_hits`";
$result = mysql_query($sql);
while($r = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
echo $r['hits'] . "\n";
}
$sql = "TRUNCATE `form_hits`";
mysql_query($sql);
?>

 

Then insert this into your crontab.

crontab

MAILTO = admin@mysite.com
0 0 * * * curl --silent --compressed http://mysite.com/path/to/phpfile.php

 

Crontab quick reference

[imperium2335]

Hi,

 

No it's windows 2003 server. what is cron?

[jcbones]

If it is windows, dis-regard crontab, it is not available. 

 

Set up a process running task scheduler.

 

Task Scheduler quick reference