Counting page views with Laravel

Question

I want to implement page view counter in my app. What I've done so far is using this method :

public function showpost($titleslug) {
        $post = Post::where('titleslug','=',$titleslug)->firstOrFail();
        $viewed = Session::get('viewed_post', []);
        if (!in_array($post->id, $viewed)) {
            $post->increment('views');
            Session::push('viewed_post', $post->id);
        }
        return view('posts/show', compact('post', $post));
    }

I retrieve the popular posts list like this :

$popular_posts = Post::orderBy('views', 'desc')->take(10)->get();

However, I'd like to know if there are any better ways to do this ? And with my current method, can I get a list of most viewed posts in the past 24 hours ? That's all and thanks!

Answer 1

As quoted in @ milo526's comment, you can record all hits to your pages in a unique way instead of an increment. With this you have many possibilities to search for access information, including the listing of the posts sorted by most viewed.

Create a table to save your view records:

Schema::create("posts_views", function(Blueprint $table)
        {
            $table->engine = "InnoDB";

            $table->increments("id");
            $table->increments("id_post");
            $table->string("titleslug");
            $table->string("url");
            $table->string("session_id");
            $table->string("user_id");
            $table->string("ip");
            $table->string("agent");
            $table->timestamps();
        });

Then, create the corresponding model:

<?php namespace App\Models;

class PostsViews extends \Eloquent {

    protected $table = 'posts_views';

    public static function createViewLog($post) {
            $postsViews= new PostsViews();
            $postsViews->id_post = $post->id;
            $postsViews->titleslug = $post->titleslug;
            $postsViews->url = \Request::url();
            $postsViews->session_id = \Request::getSession()->getId();
            $postsViews->user_id = \Auth::user()->id;
            $postsViews->ip = \Request::getClientIp();
            $postsViews->agent = \Request::header('User-Agent');
            $postsViews->save();
    }

}

Finally, your method:

public function showpost($titleslug)
{
    $post = PostsViews::where('titleslug', '=' ,$titleslug)->firstOrFail();

    PostsViews::createViewLog($post);

    //Rest of method...
}

To search the most viewed posts in the last 24 hours:

$posts = Posts::join("posts_views", "posts_views.id_post", "=", "posts.id")
            ->where("created_at", ">=", date("Y-m-d H:i:s", strtotime('-24 hours', time())))
            ->groupBy("posts.id")
            ->orderBy(DB::raw('COUNT(posts.id)', 'desc'))
            ->get(array(DB::raw('COUNT(posts.id) as total_views'), 'posts.*'));

Note that in PostsViews, you have data that can help further filter your listing, such as the session id, in case you do not want to consider hits from the same session.

You may need to adapt some aspects of this solution to your final code.

Answer 2

2020 Update

First of all, thanks a lot "Jean Marcos" for his awesome answer. All credit goes to him, I am just pasting a slightly modified answer combining my knowledge of Laravel as well.

Create a table to save your view records and name it with snake_case plural: post_views

Schema::create("post_views", function(Blueprint $table)
{
      $table->engine = "InnoDB";//this is basically optional as you are not using foreign key relationship so you could go with MyISAM as well

      $table->increments("id");
      
      //please note to use integer NOT increments as "Jean Marcos' answer" because it will throw error "Incorrect table definition; there can be only one auto column and it must be defined as a key" when running migration.
      $table->unsignedInteger("post_id");//note that the Laravel way of defining foreign keys is "table-singular-name_id", so it's preferable to use that
      
      $table->string("titleslug");
      $table->string("url");
      $table->string("session_id");
      $table->unsignedInteger('user_id')->nullable();//here note to make it nullable if your page is accessible publically as well not only by logged in users. Also its more appropriate to have "unsignedInteger" type instead of "string" type as mentioned in Jean Marcos' answer because user_id will save same data as id field of users table which in most cases will be an auto incremented id.
      $table->string("ip");
      $table->string("agent");
      $table->timestamps();
});

Then, create the corresponding model. Please note to create "camelCase" model name with the first capital letter and singular form of the table so it should be like: PostView

<?php

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class PostView extends Model
{
    public static function createViewLog($post) {
        $postViews= new PostView();
        $postViews->listing_id = $post->id;
        $postViews->url = \Request::url();
        $postViews->session_id = \Request::getSession()->getId();
        $postViews->user_id = (\Auth::check())?\Auth::id():null; //this check will either put the user id or null, no need to use \Auth()->user()->id as we have an inbuild function to get auth id
        $postViews->ip = \Request::getClientIp();
        $postViews->agent = \Request::header('User-Agent');
        $postViews->save();//please note to save it at lease, very important
    }
}

Then run the migration to generate this table

php artisan migrate

Finally, your method:

public function showpost($titleslug)
{
    $post = PostView::where('titleslug', '=' ,$titleslug)->firstOrFail();

    \App\PostView::createViewLog($post);//or add `use App\PostView;` in beginning of the file in order to use only `PostView` here 

    //Rest of method...
}

To search the most viewed posts in the last 24 hours:

$posts = Posts::join("post_views", "post_views.id_post", "=", "posts.id")
            ->where("created_at", ">=", date("Y-m-d H:i:s", strtotime('-24 hours', time())))
            ->groupBy("posts.id")
            ->orderBy(DB::raw('COUNT(posts.id)'), 'desc')//here its very minute mistake of a paranthesis in Jean Marcos' answer, which results ASC ordering instead of DESC so be careful with this line
            ->get([DB::raw('COUNT(posts.id) as total_views'), 'posts.*']);

Note that in PostView, you have data that can help further filter your listing, such as the session id, in case you do not want to consider hits from the same session.

You may need to adapt some aspects of this solution to your final code.

So those were few modifications I wanted to point out, also you might want to put an additional column client_internet_ip in which you can store \Request::ip() which can be used as a filter as well if required.

I hope it helps

Answer 3

2020 Update (2)/ With Eloquent Relationships for Laravel 6

If you don't want to add a package to your application. I have developed the following solution based on "Jean Marcos" and "Learner" contribution to the question and my own research.

All credit goes to "Jean Marcos" and "Learner", I felt like I should do the same as Learner and update the code in a way the would be beneficial to others.

First of all, make sure you have a sessions table in the database. Otherwise, follow the steps in Laravel documentations to do so: HTTP Session

Make sure that the sessions are stored in the table. If not, make sure to change the SESSION_DRIVER variable at the .env set to 'database' not 'file' and do composer dump-autoload afterwards.

After that, you are all set to go. You can start by running the following console command:

php artisan make:model PostView -m 

This will generate both the model and migration files.

Inside of the migration file put the following Schema. Be cautious with the columns names. For example, my posts table have the "slug" column title name instead of the "titleslug" which was mentioned in the question.

  Schema::create('post_views', function (Blueprint $table) {

        $table->increments("id");
        $table->unsignedInteger("post_id");
        $table->string("titleslug");
        $table->string("url");
        $table->string("session_id");
        $table->unsignedInteger('user_id')->nullable();
        $table->string("ip");
        $table->string("agent");
        $table->timestamps();
    });

Then put the following code inside the PostView model file.

<?php

namespace App;

use App\Post;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class PostView extends Model
{

    public function postView()
    {
        return $this->belongsTo(Post::class);
    }

    public static function createViewLog($post) {
        $postViews= new PostView();
        $postViews->post_id = $post->id;
        $postViews->slug = $post->slug;
        $postViews->url = request()->url();
        $postViews->session_id = request()->getSession()->getId();
        $postViews->user_id = (auth()->check())?auth()->id():null; 
        $postViews->ip = request()->ip();
        $postViews->agent = request()->header('User-Agent');
        $postViews->save();
    }
}

Now inside the Post model write the following code. This to create the relation between the posts table and the post_views table.

use App\PostView;

   public function postView()
    {
        return $this->hasMany(PostView::class);
    }

In the same Post model you should put the following code. If the user is not logged in the the code will test the IP match. Otherwise, it will test both the session ID and the user ID as each user might have multiple sessions.

public function showPost()
{
    if(auth()->id()==null){
        return $this->postView()
        ->where('ip', '=',  request()->ip())->exists();
    }

    return $this->postView()
    ->where(function($postViewsQuery) { $postViewsQuery
        ->where('session_id', '=', request()->getSession()->getId())
        ->orWhere('user_id', '=', (auth()->check()));})->exists();  
}

You are ready now to run the migration.

php artisan migrate

When the user ask for the post. The following function should be targeted inside the PostController file:

use App\PostView;

     public function show(Post $post)
        {
//Some bits from the following query ("category", "user") are made for my own application, but I felt like leaving it for inspiration. 
            $post = Post::with('category', 'user')->withCount('favorites')->find($post->id);

            if($post->showPost()){// this will test if the user viwed the post or not
                return $post;
            }

            $post->increment('views');//I have a separate column for views in the post table. This will increment the views column in the posts table.
            PostView::createViewLog($post);
            return $post;
        }

As I have a separate column for views in the post table. To search the most viewed posts in the last 24 hours you write this code in the controller. Remove paginate if you don't have pagination:

public function mostViwedPosts()
{
    return Posts::with('user')->where('created_at','>=', now()->subdays(1))->orderBy('views', 'desc')->latest()->paginate(5);
}

I hope this would help/save someones time.