php visitor counter not working - php

Question

I am having a problem with mysql. My php code is not working.
<?php
mysql_connect("localhost", "root", "root") or die("Unable to connect to the database");
mysql_select_db("visitor_counter") or die("Database is not created");
$find_counts = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM user_count");
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($find_counts))
{
$current_count = $row['counts'];
$new_count = $current_count + 1;
$update_count = mysql_query("UPDATE 'visitor_counter' . 'user_count' SET
'counts'=$new_count");
}
?>
I have tested putting some echo on my codes. Once i put the echo code on the while loop the echo doesnt work. Can anyone help me.

Answer 1

Try this :
mysql_connect("localhost", "root", "root") or die("Unable to connect to the database");
mysql_select_db("visitor_counter") or die("Database is not created");
$find_counts = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM user_count");
$current_count = 0;
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($find_counts))
{
$current_count = $row['counts'];
}
$new_count = $current_count + 1;
$update_count = mysql_query("UPDATE 'visitor_counter' . 'user_count' SET
'counts'=$new_count");

Answer 2

Check if your SELECT query works by change the code:
mysql_query("SELECT * FROM user_count") or die(mysql_error());
Check if there is data in de table user_count and edit the query:
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($find_counts))
{
print_r($row); //to print the database row
$current_count = $row['counts'];
$new_count = $current_count + 1;
$update_count = mysql_query("UPDATE user_count SET counts=".$new_count); // no need to specify the database, you already did with mysql_select_db.
}

Answer 3

Dont need to specify DB, and quotes are wrong, change to:
$update_count = mysql_query("UPDATE user_count SET counts = $new_count");
You also might want to specify a page:
$update_count = mysql_query("UPDATE user_count SET counts = $new_count WHERE page = '$this_page'");

Answer 4

what are you trying here ?
mysql_query("UPDATE 'visitor_counter' . 'user_count' SET 'counts'=$new_count");
whats the table name ?
i guess your tablename is user_count
or do you have more than one tablename you like to update ?!?!?
if tablenam eis user_count it should look like
$update_count = mysql_query("UPDATE user_count SET counts={$new_count}");
so the total while would be
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($find_counts))
{
$current_count = $row['counts'];
$new_count = $current_count + 1;
$update_count = mysql_query("UPDATE user_count SET counts={$new_count}");
}
Important
Dont use
'tablename'
in your sql query... if you like to declair a tablename use
`tablename`

Answer 5

Use single query:
UPDATE `visitor_counter`.`user_count` SET `counts`=`counts`+1;
then do your SELECT ... FROM
because passing variable into sql query for this kind of operations are not always safe
and here is Your code:
<?php
mysql_connect("localhost", "root", "root") or die("Unable to connect to the database");
mysql_select_db("visitor_counter") or die("Database is not created");
mysql_query("UPDATE `visitor_counter`.`user_count` SET `counts`=`counts`+1");
$counts = array();
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM user_count");
while($data = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
$counts[$data['id']] = $data['counts'];
}
?>

Answer 6

I'm really surprised to see everybody here posts code using the old and deprecated mysql functions (although some of them stated this is wrong). I would like to advice you AGAINST using mysql functions - they are deprecated as of version 5.5. You should use either mysqli or PDO instead. In my opinion, you should be using PDO as it provides support for almost all databases and you could use prepared statements.
Now to your code - I'm not quite sure why would use a cycle to count all of the records in the counts column. A much better way to do this is by using atomic increment - it will also guarantee your counter is properly incremented in case two queries are trying to increment the value simultaneously. Although you haven't posted your table structure, I believe something like this should do the work:
<?php
// Database connection settings
$db_host = '127.0.0.1';
$db_name = 'visitor_counter';
$db_user = 'root';
$db_pass = 'root';
// Try to connect to the database
try {
$dsn = 'mysql:host='.$db_host.';dbname='.$db_name;
$db = new PDO($dsn, $db_user, $db_pass);
} catch ( PDOException $e ){
// Do something if connection could not be established
throw new ErrorException("Could not connect to database!",0,1,__FILE__,__LINE__,$e);
}
// Find counts
// Assuming you have a user_id column in your `user_count` table.
$user_id = 1;
// Update counter
$update = $db->prepare('UPDATE user_count SET counter=(counter+1) WHERE user_id = :user_id');
$update->bindValue(':user_id', $user_id, PDO::PARAM_INT);
$update->execute();
?>
P.S. In this code I'm assuming you're saving the visitor counter in the user_count.counter column and whenever somebody visits that user, the counter column is incremented for that specific user, rather than updating the counter for all users (as your code suggests).