INSERT or UPDATE

[johnsmith153]

I am logging occasions someone's profile is viewed.

 

I will use a Cron to report the amount of views.

 

Do I?

 

(1) INSERT a record every time and count up at end. Remember, I'm using a Cron to report amount of views so won't be counting up on every page request!!

 

(2) UPDATE a table (but won't I need to SELECT previous value first)? Unless, "UPDATE field1 and add 1 to it's value" is possible.

 

Which is best?

[floridaflatlander]

insert for me

[cyberRobot]

If I'm understanding the senerio properly, you should be able to use either. To update you basically would need to get the old count for the profile being viewed, update the count, and update the database.

 

But you might be better off tracking all the views with insert. In addition to just getting the count, you could gather more information that may be useful down the road. For example, you could collect the date and/or time a profile was viewed which could be used to tell you how many people viewed the profile in the last month.

[johnsmith153]

So you can't do an UPDATE where you add 1 on to the current value stored?

 

If I had to SELECT and get the current value (say 232), then add 1 on in PHP and then UPDATE (with the new value, which is obviously 233), then clearly that would be stupid.

[PFMaBiSmAd]

You can do an UPDATE that simply adds one to the current value, but you asked which method is better.

 

Recording each view as a separate row using an INSERT query IS better.

[johnsmith153]

INSERT it is.