page view count LARAVEL - php

Question

i am still new to laravel and i want to implement visitors/view counter to my page, i looked everywhere and found a way but when i tried it it doesn't seem to work properly the views are always 0 .
this is the table where the views are stored :
Schema::create('views', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->increments('id')->unsigned();
$table->morphs('viewable');
$table->timestamps();
});
and this is the views Model :
class views extends Model
{
protected $table = 'views';
protected $guarded = ['id'];
}
and these are the functions i added to the model i want to count its visitors :
public function views()
{
return $this->morphMany(
\App\Models\views::class,
'viewable'
);
}
public function getViewsCount()
{
return $this->views()->count();
}
public function getViewsCountSince($sinceDateTime)
{
return $this->views()->where('created_at', '>', $sinceDateTime)->count();
}
public function getViewsCountUpto($uptoDateTime)
{
return $this->views()->where('created_at', '<', $uptoDateTime)->count();
}
i called the function in my blade like this :
<i class="fa fa-eye"></i> {{$details->getViewsCount()}} Views
and i'm getting 0 views, i don't know if this is working or i am doing something wrong .. any ideas please !

Answer 1

The problem that I can see is the relationship.
The View model contains the viewable_id and viewable_type so the relationship should be a MorphTo.
And then for example if the Post model could have views then this would have the MorphMany relationship.
You are creating a one to many polymorphic relationship documented here https://laravel.com/docs/8.x/eloquent-relationships#one-to-many-polymorphic-relations.
Additionally, look into the withCount method, https://laravel.com/docs/8.x/eloquent-relationships#counting-related-models might be a better fit for what you want. So you can do something as follows:
Post::withCount('views');
Or if you need to filter the count based on when the view was done.
Post::withCount([
'views' => function ($query) {
$query->where('created_at', >=, $someDate)
}
]);
And then you can access it like $posts[0]->views_count.
Edit:
I would also add to make sure that if you are adding data manually the viewable_type value would need to look like this App\Models\View or in laravel versions 7 or below the default location of the file would be App\View, but this depends on the location of your models.