Create a very simple hit page view counter without any database! Use flat file scripting to make an easy counter!
For this tutorial, I assume you have basic knowledge of PHP (if, echo, die, variables, etc).
Here is our code, I'll explain this piece by piece:
| <?php
$file = 'hits.txt'; if (!is_writable($file)) die('not writable'); $current = trim(file_get_contents($file)) + 1; fwrite(fopen($file, 'w'), $current); echo $current; ?> |
This is our hit file variable, make sure this file exists, and make it contain "0".
| $file = 'hits.txt'; |
This checks to see if we can write to $file, which is "hits.txt".
| if (!is_writable($file)) die('not writable'); |
This we use two functions, trim and file_get_contents.
| $current = trim(file_get_contents($file)) + 1; |
trim will remove all whitespace in a string, and our string will be determined by file_get_contents.
file_get_contents will return the contents of a file into a string.
Then we use + 1 at the end, which will add 1 to the string, which would be the number inside of $file.
Now we're going to use fwrite and fopen to write the new hit count to $file.
fwrite will write a string into a file, controlled by a file handler (fopen).
fopen will create a file handler, pointed at a specified file and mode, we'll use "w" as the mode (write).
Then we just use echo $current to display our total hits.
That's all there is for this tutorial, enjoy it everyone!
