Counting the number of downloads

[graham23s]

Hi Guys,

 

on my site when a user goes to the "downloads.php" page i update mysql to say downloads+1 to increment the number of downloads each time (but saying that not everyone who goes to the downloads page downloads something)

 

the code is pretty basic:

 

downloads.php

 

     // start by grabbing the id...//////////////////////////////////////////////////
     $id = $_GET['id'];	
     
     // get the file...///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
     $query1 = "SELECT * FROM `uploads` WHERE `id`='$id'"; 
     $result1 = mysql_query($query1);
     $row = mysql_fetch_array($result1);
     
     $file_id = $row['file_id']; 
     $file_name = $row['file_name'];
     
     // update the hit counter...////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
     mysql_query("UPDATE `uploads` SET `downloads`=`downloads` + 1 WHERE `id`='$id'");

 

i was thinking a better way would be to place a button there when pressed the download box pops up and THEN it increments mysql but i'm not entirely sure where to go from there i can do the buttons ok:

 

<input type="submit" name="submit" value="downlod" />

 

so when the button is pressed the downloads starts (it's not a specific filename) so the name of the downloaded file changes depending on what the uploader has called it kinda thing.

 

any help would be great.

 

cheers

 

Graham

[ted_chou12]

Try have a javascript popup that links straight to the file, see the code below:

if (isset($_POST['submit'])) {
?>
<script type="text/javascript">
window.open("http://www.yourdomain.com/file/link.exe");
</script>
<?
     // start by grabbing the id...//////////////////////////////////////////////////
     $id = $_GET['id'];	
     
     // get the file...///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
     $query1 = "SELECT * FROM `uploads` WHERE `id`='$id'"; 
     $result1 = mysql_query($query1);
     $row = mysql_fetch_array($result1);
     
     $file_id = $row['file_id']; 
     $file_name = $row['file_name'];
     
     // update the hit counter...////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
     mysql_query("UPDATE `uploads` SET `downloads`=`downloads` + 1 WHERE `id`='$id'");}
?>

Try if this works or not, but I am not confident, just make sure the popup links to your file.

Ted

[cooldude832]

if you wanted to be modern and the button only activates the download you could you ajax to update the table.  I'm not a great ajax person, but tutorials make it sound simple.

[cooldude832]

you can invoke ajax off an anchor tag too which could be a direct link to the file download.

[graham23s]

Hi Guys,

 

thanks for the input how hard is ajax? lol the only thing is i don't know the names of the files uploaded i couldn't say : a specificname.doc it would depend on what the user has uploaded would i just stick it in a variable?

 

cheers

 

Graham