Update table value on page view? - php

Question

I am trying to create a PHP trigger for when a user views certain pages on my website it will update the user table in the points section.
I understand the process would work something like this
on page view > update user > where user id is (**get username from session**) > add 5 to points row
Anyone have any idea how to set up something simple like this for giving users simple points for viewing pages?
My site is using PHP and mySQL for the database.

Answer 1

Use cookies or session variables to keep track of the user details like the username or ID. So making a pageview trigger would be as easy as adding a mysql query at the top of every page which would update the database table for views. Kinda the same way that forums operate.
E.g
<?php
session_start();
$db_connection = mysqli_connect('host','username','password','db');
$user_id = $_SESSION['userid']; //That is asssuming that you had gotten the user id on login
mysqli_query($db_connection, 'UPDATE page_views SET views_column=views_column+1 WHERE userid=$user_id');
?>

Answer 2

Yes, you could do something like (if you own the page the user has to visit):
<?php
$pointsForThisSite = 5;
include "points_adder.php";
?>
While Points_adder looks whether $pointsForThisSite is defined and > 0, then adds the Points to the database as you descripbed.
Is that what you are looking for?

Answer 3

Create a php function and call it everytime the user enter the page.
You don't need a mysql trigger because, the action is at the webpage.
function add_points($user, $page){
//If users visits too many maybe you don't want to gave him some points.
//add points
}
and invoke the function in that pages you want to score

Answer 4

The most unobtrusive way to do this is with an AJAX call after the page has loaded. The call should be to an include file that performs the database update operation and returns a 204 response so that the visitor's browser doesn't wait for response content.
For an Apache server;
header('HTTP/1.0 204 No Content');
header('Content-Length: 0', true);
header('Content-Type: text/html', true);
flush();
// do the table update here