PHP Hit Counter

Welcome, this tutorial will guide you on how to make a PHP hit counter.

Requirments: You should know the basics to a file system unit.

Step 1: We need to create a script called ‘counter.php’ and a text file called ‘hits.txt’ WITH a value of 0 [You Just Create A Text File And Put Number ZERO On That And Save It], if you are not doing this your counter script wont work.Make sure the TXT file it has enough permissions.

Review: You should now have 2 files open, ‘counter.php’ open with nothing in it and ‘hits.txt’ open with a ‘0′ in it.

Step 2: CLOSE ‘hits.txt’ (We don’t need it any more for now) Now we need to start PHP coding, so first we do is enter the basic page outline as used in most php pages.

PHP Code:

<?php

?>

Review: You should now have a PHP file called ‘counter.php’ open with the code above.

Step 3: Now we need to have the file get the code from the page, so we need to open it and get the data, this is outlined below.

PHP Code:

$open = fopen(“hits.txt”, “r+”);
$value = fgets($open);
$close = fclose($open);

$value++;

Review: You now can read the file, and it will double, hence the ‘$value++;’, this adds one to the current file.

Step 4: Now we should output the new number to the file. This is the easy part.

PHP Code:

$open = fopen(“hits.txt”, “w+”);
fwrite($open,$value);
fclose($open);

Review: Now we have the number plus one in the file ‘hits.txt’.

Step 5: Let’s echo the value so that it can be included anywhere.

PHP Code:

echo $value;

Final Talk: Ok, so now your file should look like this:

PHP Code:

<?php

$open = fopen(“hits.txt”, “r+”);
$value = fgets($open);
$close = fclose($open);

$value++;

$open = fopen(“hits.txt”, “w+”);
fwrite($open, $value); // variable is not restated, bug fixed.
$close = fclose($open);

echo $value;

?>

Related posts:

1. Reading file using php
2. Caching of web page using php
3. Append data to a text file using php