Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Programming Discussion : I need a counter to do this

[viper545]

I need a script to do this:

Basically it will put a counter on my webpage. I only allow 15 subscriptions to my service every day so every time somone completes subscription (this can be calculated by somone clicking on a webpage as the last step in registration) And when it hits 15, I need it to bring the user to another page to tell him/her to sign up tomorrow.

If this is possible it would be great, thanks.

[Oras]

Sure you can do this by making a simple file and put a counter on it, and do a cron job to set the counter value to zero at the begining of each day.
Or make a table in DB (id,counter,date)

[Xenatino]

Create a MySQL table with the fields uid, counter, lastupdate. When a user has completed a subscription, update the table, incrementing the field counter by 1.

Implement a script into your subscription page that checks when the last update occured. If it was more than 24 hours ago, reset the counter and update the lastupdate field with an UNIX timestamp.

Hint: 24 hours is 86400 seconds

[Unknown01]

or you can do the easyest and probly most effiecent way and uses sessions. everytime somone finishes a sign up you go

$_SESSION[ 'times' ] = $_SESSION[ 'times'] + 1;

then you just keep checking to see if the session is 15 or over by (put this at the top of your page )

if( $_SESSION[ 'times' ] >= '15' ) {
CODE HERE TO REDIRECT TO OTHER PAGE
die();
}

Hope this helps. Dont forget to start the session by using session_start

-- Unknown01

[mahadri]

Originally Posted by Oras

Sure you can do this by making a simple file and put a counter on it, and do a cron job to set the counter value to zero at the begining of each day.

Clever! Very clever! I love the simplicity. However, I don't recommend using flat-text files because you have to deal with locking to atomically increment the number inside. Instead, you can have a cronjob set a field in a database to 0.

Originally Posted by Oras

Or make a table in DB (id,counter,date)

This is a good solution, but requires a little extra logic for the first signup of the day. Also, the id field isn't needed, as you can use the date field as the primary key.

Originally Posted by Xenatino

Implement a script into your subscription page that checks when the last update occured. If it was more than 24 hours ago, reset the counter and update the lastupdate field with an UNIX timestamp.

If at least one person subscribes every 24 hours, the counter would never reset.

Originally Posted by Unknown01

or you can do the easyest and probly most effiecent way and uses sessions. everytime somone finishes a sign up ...

Aren't sessions tied to a specific visitor? In that case, every visitor would have their own counter, so this wouldn't work either.

[Burhan]

If you are already storing the information in the database, then you can simply do a count on the number of records for that day:

SELECT COUNT(id) FROM `entries` WHERE `entrydate` = CURDATE()

Then, if the result of that query is >15, display the 'sorry, come back tomorrow' page.

[realwebsolution]

fyrestrtr
Your solution seems to be fine on this case

[viper545]

And if you knew nothing about programming how would you go about doing this? Could somone write me up a script? The registration is not stored in a mysql database, the number would have to progress +1 by clicking a button that submits the registration.

Thanks