using href to two links(php and a webpage) [closed] - php

Question

Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
Questions asking for code must demonstrate a minimal understanding of the problem being solved. Include attempted solutions, why they didn't work, and the expected results. See also: Stack Overflow question checklist
Closed 9 years ago.
Improve this question
While($enreg=mysql_fetch_array($res))
{
$link_d.="<font color=\"red\">clic here to download</font></td>"
}
i want to use the href so it leads to download link, also to send the id to a php file so i can get how many times the files have been downloaded !
How can we use href to multiple links !

Answer 1

You can't. A link can only point to one resource.
Instead, what you should do is have your PHP script redirect to the file. The link points at your PHP script with the counter, and then set a Location: header (which automatically sets a 302 status code for redirection) with the value being the URL you want to redirect to.
Also, you should really use htmlspecialchars() around any variable data you use in an HTML context, to ensure you are generating valid HTML.

Answer 2

Ideally you would have some checks to see if it's a human downloading (Web crawlers may trigger it - we will put no-follow in the link which will help though). You could also use a database but that gets more complicated. My preferred way would be to use Google Analytics Events. But here is a simple PHP script that might fulfill your needs without the complexity of the other solutions.
First modify your links to have a tracker script and to urlencode
$link_d.= '<a style="color:red" href="tracker.php?url='.urlencode($enreg[link]).'" target="_blank">click here to download</a>';
}
Then create a script that will record downloads (tracker.php)
<?php
// keep stats in a file - you can change the path to have it be below server root
// or just use a secret name - must be writeable by server
$statsfile = 'stats.txt';
// only do something if there is a url
if(isset($_GET['url'])) {
//decode it
$url = urldecode($_GET['url']);
// Do whatever check you want here to see if it's a valud link - you can add a regex for a URL for example
if(strpos($url, 'http') != -1) {
// load current data into an array
$lines = file($statsfile);
// parse array into something useable by php
$stats = array();
foreach($lines as $line) {
$bits = explode('|', $line);
$stats[(string)$bits[0]] = (int)$bits[1];
}
// see if there is an entry already
if(!isset($stats[$url])) {
// no so let's add it with a count of 1
$stats[$url] = 1;
} else {
// yes let's increment
$stats[$url]++;
}
// get a blank string to write to file
$data = null;
// get our array into some human readabke format
foreach($stats as $url => $count) {
$data .= $url.'|'.$count."\n";
}
// and write to file
file_put_contents($statsfile, $data);
}
// now redirect to file
header('Location: ' . $url);
}

Answer 3

You can't.
Anchor are meant to lead to one ressource.
What you want to do is tipically addressed by using an intermediate script that count the hit and redirect to the ressource.
eg.
Click here to download
redirect.php
// Increment for example, a database :
// UPDATE downloads SET hits = (hits + 1) WHERE id=42
// Get the URI
// SELECT uri FROM downloads WHERE id=42
// Redirect to the URI
// (You may also need to set Content-type header for file downloads)
header( "Location: $uri" );
You may optimize this by passing the uri as a second parameter so that you won't need to fetch it at redirect time.
Click here to download
Another way of collecting this kind of statistics is to use some javascript tools provided by your statistics provider, like Google Analytics or Piwik, adding a listener to the click event.
It is less invasive for your base code but won't let you easily reuse collected data in your site (for example if you want to show a "top download" list).

Answer 4

Create a file with download script for example download.php and route all your downloads through it. Update your counter in this page and use appropriate headers for download.
eg:
url may be download.php?id=1&file=yourfile
in download.php
//get id and file
//database operation to update your count
//headers for download