Log your visitors to a text file using PHP
Sunday, September 16th, 2007 | Programming, Tech
Not all web hosts grant access to web server logs. And even if you do have access to them they may not be that useful. The solution is to write your own script which will log your own stats. And it can all be done without the use of a database. Though databases are great for this not everyone has a spare one so I am going to use nothing more complex than a text file to show the information.
The logging file
The first thing we need is a file to record each hit and log the information in a text file. This is done by creating a function and adding all the variables into it. We can then add information for these variables later in the tutorial.
<?php
function logthis ($sessionid, $pagevisited, $ip, $browser, $refer)
{
$log = fopen("log.txt","a");
$countryfile = fopen("http://ip-to-country.com/gert-country/?ip=$ip&user=guest&password=guest","r");
$country = fgets($countryfile,50);
fclose($countryfile);
This sets up the basic information for the log. I also used a tool which allows you to send an IP address and the site will return the country which that user is from. And therefore we can log which country each visitor comes from.
$now = date("d F Y h:i:s A");
fwrite($log,"$now,$sessionid,$pagevisited,$ip,$country,$browser,$refer\n");
$log = fclose($log);
}
?>
This code writes in the information. Well the top bit gets the date. But the second part at least does the interesting things. All the variables are lined up and the data is separated by comma’s to allow it to be analysed later. There is also the \n to indicate a new line should be gone to after the data is written in.
That is all the code for the logging file. Save it as log.php. We are now done with this file so you can close it down as everything else will be done from the other pages.
Code for the pages
For each of the pages you want to log the stats on you need to insert some code above the <html> tag to allow us to track the visitors to that page. So you will probably want to insert the code into all your pages.
There are two parts to the code that needs to be inserted into your pages. The first includes the log.php file into your page so we have the function. The second gives all the information to be included.
<?php
require 'log.php';
session_start();
logthishit(session_id(), $PHP_SELF, $REMOTE_ADDR, $HTTP_USER_AGENT, $HTTP_REFERER);
?>
After the include line there is a line telling PHP to start a session. Sessions are new to PHP4 and allow each user to be treated individually so you can work out when duplicate users are visiting different pages.
This code can be pasted into all your pages and remain relatively unchanged. The only bit which will need some tinkering with is the path to log.php. So for instance if you had a page in a games folder and log.php was in a folder called stats you would need to change log.php next to require to ../stats/log.php.
A few small tasks
You are almost done! Just a few small things to do and then we are finished. First open up your text editor, Notepad is fine, and save a blank file as log.txt in the same folder as you saved log.php. Once that is done upload the two files and any files which you added the code into to your web space.
It’s best to upload your files to the root directory of your website if you can. You then need to make sure that that text file has read and write properties. It may have already although if it doesn’t or your not sure then make sure by right clicking on it in your FTP client and look for a properties menu or something similar. This is usually how it’s accessed though it may vary depending on your FTP client.
Finally there is one more thing you may want to do. If all your files use .htm or a similar extension and you can only run PHP scripts on .php pages you will have a problem as you may not want to rename all the files. So if you can’t rename the pages and PHP scripts don’t work in .htm pages you need to edit your .htaccess file.
If you don’t already have one then you can copy the following code into a blank text file, save it as .htaccess and upload it to your web space. If you already have one then download the current one and add this code or modify the existing code to look like this.
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .html .htm
You can add any other extensions you use to the end of these too.
Analysis & Conclusion
Now your server log is complete and the script will begin counting all your visitors and saving them in log.txt. When you want to view the log all you have to do is either point your browser to the file or download it using your FTP client and open it in a text editor.
That is your basic view, however if you would like something more complex then use a spreadsheet application such as Excel. You can open log.txt up in a spreadsheet and it should display fine as we added in the comma’s to separate the data.
You can also use the AutoFilter which can be found in the Tools menu at the top of Excel so you can select one piece of data to filter in the logs such as one users session id or one browser to display all the data from.
Now you not only have great logs but they look shiny too.
Not all web hosts grant access to web server logs. And even if you do have access to them they may not be that useful. The solution is to write your own script which will log your own stats. And it can all be done without the use of a database. Though databases are great for this not everyone has a spare one so I am going to use nothing more complex than a text file to show the information.
The logging file
The first thing we need is a file to record each hit and log the information in a text file. This is done by creating a function and adding all the variables into it. We can then add information for these variables later in the tutorial.
<?php
function logthis ($sessionid, $pagevisited, $ip, $browser, $refer)
{
$log = fopen("log.txt","a");
$countryfile = fopen("http://ip-to-country.com/gert-country/?ip=$ip&user=guest&password=guest","r");
$country = fgets($countryfile,50);
fclose($countryfile);
This sets up the basic information for the log. I also used a tool which allows you to send an IP address and the site will return the country which that user is from. And therefore we can log which country each visitor comes from.
$now = date("d F Y h:i:s A");
fwrite($log,"$now,$sessionid,$pagevisited,$ip,$country,$browser,$refer\n");
$log = fclose($log);
}
?>
This code writes in the information. Well the top bit gets the date. But the second part at least does the interesting things. All the variables are lined up and the data is separated by comma’s to allow it to be analysed later. There is also the \n to indicate a new line should be gone to after the data is written in.
That is all the code for the logging file. Save it as log.php. We are now done with this file so you can close it down as everything else will be done from the other pages.
Code for the pages
For each of the pages you want to log the stats on you need to insert some code above the <html> tag to allow us to track the visitors to that page. So you will probably want to insert the code into all your pages.
There are two parts to the code that needs to be inserted into your pages. The first includes the log.php file into your page so we have the function. The second gives all the information to be included.
<?php require 'log.php'; session_start(); logthishit(session_id(), $PHP_SELF, $REMOTE_ADDR, $HTTP_USER_AGENT, $HTTP_REFERER); ?>
After the include line there is a line telling PHP to start a session. Sessions are new to PHP4 and allow each user to be treated individually so you can work out when duplicate users are visiting different pages.
This code can be pasted into all your pages and remain relatively unchanged. The only bit which will need some tinkering with is the path to log.php. So for instance if you had a page in a games folder and log.php was in a folder called stats you would need to change log.php next to require to ../stats/log.php.
A few small tasks
You are almost done! Just a few small things to do and then we are finished. First open up your text editor, Notepad is fine, and save a blank file as log.txt in the same folder as you saved log.php. Once that is done upload the two files and any files which you added the code into to your web space.
It’s best to upload your files to the root directory of your website if you can. You then need to make sure that that text file has read and write properties. It may have already although if it doesn’t or your not sure then make sure by right clicking on it in your FTP client and look for a properties menu or something similar. This is usually how it’s accessed though it may vary depending on your FTP client.
Finally there is one more thing you may want to do. If all your files use .htm or a similar extension and you can only run PHP scripts on .php pages you will have a problem as you may not want to rename all the files. So if you can’t rename the pages and PHP scripts don’t work in .htm pages you need to edit your .htaccess file.
If you don’t already have one then you can copy the following code into a blank text file, save it as .htaccess and upload it to your web space. If you already have one then download the current one and add this code or modify the existing code to look like this.
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .html .htm
You can add any other extensions you use to the end of these too.
Analysis & Conclusion
Now your server log is complete and the script will begin counting all your visitors and saving them in log.txt. When you want to view the log all you have to do is either point your browser to the file or download it using your FTP client and open it in a text editor.
That is your basic view, however if you would like something more complex then use a spreadsheet application such as Excel. You can open log.txt up in a spreadsheet and it should display fine as we added in the comma’s to separate the data.
You can also use the AutoFilter which can be found in the Tools menu at the top of Excel so you can select one piece of data to filter in the logs such as one users session id or one browser to display all the data from.
Now you not only have great logs but they look shiny too.