Count Page By Weekly, then create new table entry - php

Question

I've created a page counter, and want to track how many times the user click the page.
So far I can track how many times they click the page, but I want to now set it so when a week is up that it will create a new entry.
My mysql_query look up is base on the user's name, seeing there is more than one user I'm tracking.
This is my code for tracking a user for a selected page:
<?php
include"lib/settings.php";
date_default_timezone_set("America/Los_Angeles");
$track_users_clicks = $_SESSION['username'];
$todays_date = date("m/d/Y H:i:s a");
$query = "SELECT * FROM page_count WHERE `username`=".sql_val($track_users_clicks);
$result = mysql_query($query) or die("<b>A fatal MySQL error occured</b>.<br />Query: ".$query."<br />Error: (".mysql_errno().") ".mysql_error());
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
$username = $row['username'];
$counter_snippet = $row['counter_snippet'];
$date_time = $row['date_time'];
}//end while
if ($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']){
$query_update = 'UPDATE page_count SET
`counter_snippet` = '.sql_val($counter_snippet + 1).',
`date_time` = '.sql_val($todays_date).'
WHERE `username` = '.sql_val($track_users_clicks);
$result = mysql_query($query_update) or die("<b>A fatal MySQL error occured</b>.<br />Query: ".$query_update."<br />Error: (".mysql_errno().") ".mysql_error());
}
?>
This is so far what I've come up with for tracking a user per week:
<?php
include"lib/settings.php";
date_default_timezone_set("America/Los_Angeles");
//$track_users_clicks = $_SESSION['username'];
$todays_date = date("m/d/Y");
$begin_date = date("m/d/Y");
$end_date = date( "m/d/Y", strtotime($begin_date."+7 day" ) );
$user_log = "trevor.hanes" .$end_date;
$track_users_clicks = "trevor.hanes";
$query_begin = "SELECT * FROM date_time WHERE `username`=".sql_val($track_users_clicks);
$result = mysql_query($query_begin) or die("<b>A fatal MySQL error occured</b>.<br />Query: ".$query_begin."<br />Error: (".mysql_errno().") ".mysql_error());
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
$username = $row['username'];
$counter_snippet = $row['counter_snippet'];
$start_date = $row['start_date'];
//$end_date = $row['end_date'];
}
if ($todays_date >= $end_date){
$query_start = 'INSERT INTO date_time (
`username`,
`start_date`,
`end_date`,
`user_log`
) VALUES (
'.sql_val($track_users_clicks).',
'.sql_val($todays_date).',
'.sql_val($end_date).',
'.sql_val($user_log).'
)';
$result = mysql_query($query_start) or die("<b>A fatal MySQL error occured</b>.<br />Query: ".$query_start."<br />Error: (".mysql_errno().") ".mysql_error());
}
else
{
if ($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']){
if ($end_date >= $todays_date){
$query_update = 'UPDATE date_time SET
`counter_snippet` = '.sql_val($counter_snippet + 1).'
WHERE `end_date` = '.sql_val($end_date);
$result = mysql_query($query_update) or die("<b>A fatal MySQL error occured</b>.<br />Query: ".$query_update."<br />Error: (".mysql_errno().") ".mysql_error());
}}}
echo $begin_date;
echo "<BR>";
echo $end_date;
echo "<BR>";
echo $user_log;
?>
So my problem is once I change the date any later than the end date, it just keeps creating new table entries. Instead of creating one new table entry for the new week then updating the hits.
Any thoughts on what I'm doing wrong.

Answer 1

First thing's first: You NEED to be using prepared statements. Prepared statements will prevent malicious code from profoundly impacting your database. For example, somebody could drop your entire table if you had poorly configured user privileges by getting the following text into $_SESSION['username']:
; DROP TABLE page_count;
This looks like a decent tutorial on PDO (most common way to use prepared statements in PHP) at: http://wiki.hashphp.org/PDO_Tutorial_for_MySQL_Developers
Anyway, to actually answer your question, use a query like the following:
SELECT *, YEARWEEK(date_time) as week,
FROM page_count WHERE `username` = :USERNAME
GROUP BY week;
Documentation for YEARWEEK: http://www.techonthenet.com/mysql/functions/yearweek.php