Tracking non logged-in users in Yii/PHP - php

Question

I am trying to track the actions of all non-logged in users on my site. The aim is to store this activity so that I can add it to their profile when they do create an account.
I am using the Behaviour below to assign new users a cookie and use that cookie as the basis of a "temp user" row in my Users table. This way a user can straight away start interacting with my API.
This seems to work fine. However, I am seeing loads more "temp user" rows being created in my DB than I have visitors to the site - about 2500 compared with around 500 visits yesterday (according to Google Analytics).
Is there anything wrong with the behaviour below, or am I doing something else wrong? Is there a better way?
<?php
class ApplicationBehavior extends CBehavior
{
private $_owner;
public function events()
{
return array(
'onBeginRequest' => 'setCookies'
);
}
public function setCookies()
{
$owner = $this->getOwner();
if ($owner->user->getIsGuest() && !isset(Yii::app()->request->cookies['dc_tempusername'])):
$tempusername = genRandomString(20);
$tempuser = new User();
$tempuser->username = $tempusername;
$tempuser->email = "noemailyet#tempuser.com";
if (isset(Yii::app()->request->cookies['dc_tempusername'])) {
$tempuser->name = Yii::app()->request->cookies['dc_tempusername']->value;
} else {
$tempuser->name = "CookieBasedTempuser";
}
$tempuser->points = 1;
$tempuser->firstip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
if ($tempuser->validate()) {
Yii::app()->request->cookies['dc_tempusername'] = new CHttpCookie('dc_tempusername', $tempusername);
$cookie = new CHttpCookie('dc_tempusername', $tempusername);
$cookie->expire = time() + 60 * 60 * 24 * 180;
Yii::app()->request->cookies['dc_tempusername'] = $cookie;
$tempuser->save();
} else {
echo CHtml::errorSummary($tempuser);
}
endif;
}
}
?>

Answer 1

Check if cookies are enabled first:
Check if cookies are enabled
If we're correct, every time you see that the user is a guest and does not have a cookie then you're creating a new temp user.
Why not check to see if a cookie is set first, if so then create the temp user?
You would end up needing to set 2 cookies: initial temp cookie to check against, and then your 'dc_tempusername' cookie.
You could even go as far as using Browscap to check against known bots:
https://github.com/browscap/browscap-php
http://browscap.org/
You'll need to be able to define browscap in your php.ini