Simple Page Hit Counter in PHP

To create a simple page hot counter what we need is a mysql table to store the hits and then a PHP script to send the hits to the mysql table and retrieve the hits back.

We can use CREATE TABLE statement to create the table in the mysql database.

Let’s create the table in mysql using this statement:

CREATE TABLE `page_hit_counter_table`
  (`page_hit_counter` 
  INT(255) 
  NOT NULL);

We have the page_hit_counter column set as NOT NULL. Let’s set the value for the column to 0 so that we can increment it every time an user visits the page.

INSERT INTO page_hit_counter VALUES (0);

All set.

The page hit counter column is ready to go and increment.

Let’s add the script to increase the hit counter.

Let’s add a code to make a connection to the database.

mysql_connect("your mysql host address", 
  "username", "password") 
  or die(mysql_error()); 
  mysql_select_db("Your Database Name") 
  or die(mysql_error());

Let’s add code to increase the page hit counter. We’ll use UPDATE statement like any sql (postgresql, mysql etc.).

mysql_query("UPDATE page_hit_counter_table 
  SET page_hit_counter 
  = page_hit_counter + 1");

Let’s retrieve the counter and print it on the blog post page (or any kind of page that you have the counter for).

$page_hit_counter = 
  mysql_fetch_row(mysql_query
  ("SELECT page_hit_counter 
  FROM page_hit_counter_table"));
  echo $page_hit_counter[0]; 

DONE. It should display the page hit counter on your page now.

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