You have some files you want to put up for downloads and want to track how many times they have been downloaded ?

Here's an example using jquery, php and mysql. You can download the source files and visit the demo page.

First we need two mysql tables, i've called them db_links and db_links_hits

mysql tables

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS db_links (

  `id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,

  `link` text NOT NULL,

  PRIMARY KEY  (`id`)

) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ;



CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS db_links_hits (

  `id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,

  `link_id` int(11) NOT NULL,

  `date` datetime NOT NULL,

  `ip` varchar(20) NOT NULL,

  PRIMARY KEY  (`id`)

) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ;

in index.php import the LinkStat class and connect to the database :

require_once "LinkStat.php";



// define connection settings

define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

define('DB_USER', 'dbuser');

define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password');

define('DB_DATABASE', 'database');



// establish a connection to the database server

if(!$GLOBALS['DB'] = mysql_connect(DB_HOST, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD)) {

	die('ERROR : Unable to connect to database server.');

}

if(!mysql_select_db(DB_DATABASE, $GLOBALS['DB'])) {

	mysql_close($GLOBALS['DB']);

	die('ERROR : Unable to select database schema.');

}

then import all necessary files in your page :

add the class "linkstat" to the links you want to track

click me !

when clicking the link, it calls the click function in linkstats.js

$(document).ready(function(){

	

	$("a.linkstat").click(function(e) {

		e.preventDefault(); // needed for safari 4.0.5

		

		$.post("/examples/linkstats/ajax-linkstat.php", {url: $(this).attr('href')}, function success(data) {

			window.location = data; // needed for safari 4.0.5

		});

		return true;

	});

	

});

the $.post function sends an ajax-post request with the link url as parameter to the php file 'ajax-linkstat.php' that do the job of storing the link hit in the database.

require_once "LinkStat.php";



// ... connect to database ... 



// insert new link hit in the database

LinkStat::addHit($_POST['url'], getIp());



// return url for redirect

echo $_POST['url'];





// function to get the user ip address

function getIp() { 



    if (getenv('HTTP_CLIENT_IP')) { 

        $ip = getenv('HTTP_CLIENT_IP'); 

    }

    elseif (getenv('HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR')) { 

        $ip = getenv('HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'); 

    }

    elseif (getenv('HTTP_X_FORWARDED')) { 

        $ip = getenv('HTTP_X_FORWARDED'); 

    }

    elseif (getenv('HTTP_FORWARDED_FOR')) { 

        $ip = getenv('HTTP_FORWARDED_FOR'); 

    }

    elseif (getenv('HTTP_FORWARDED')) { 

        $ip = getenv('HTTP_FORWARDED'); 

    }

    else { 

        $ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']; 

    }

    return $ip; 

}

That's all !