How do I track file downloads

Question

I have a website that plays mp3s in a flash player. If a user clicks 'play' the flash player automatically downloads an mp3 and starts playing it.

Is there an easy way to track how many times a particular song clip (or any binary file) has been downloaded?

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Is the play link a link to the actual mp3 file or to some javascript code that pops up a player?

If the latter, you can easily add your own logging code in there to track the number of hits to it.

If the former, you'll need something that can track the web server log itself and make that distinction. My hosting plan comes with Webalizer, which does this nicely.

It's a javascript code so that answers that.

However, it would be nice to know how to track downloads using the other method (without switching hosts).

Answer 1

The funny thing is I wrote a php media gallery for all my musics 2 days ago. I had a similar problem. I'm using http://musicplayer.sourceforge.net/ for the player. And the playlist is built via php. All music requests go to a script called xfer.php?file=WHATEVER

$filename = base64_url_decode($_REQUEST['file']); header("Cache-Control: public"); header('Content-disposition: attachment; filename='.basename($filename)); header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary"); header('Content-Length: '. filesize($filename));  //  Put either file counting code here, either a db or static files // readfile($filename);  //and spit the user the file  function base64_url_decode($input) {     return base64_decode(strtr($input, '-_,', '+/=')); } 

And when you call files use something like:

function base64_url_encode($input) {      return strtr(base64_encode($input), '+/=', '-_,'); } 

http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.base64-encode.php

If you are using some JavaScript or a flash player (JW player for example) that requires the actual link of an mp3 file or whatever, you can append the text "&type=.mp3" so the final link becomes something like: "www.example.com/xfer.php?file=34842ffjfjxfh&type=.mp3". That way it looks like it ends with an mp3 extension without affecting the file link.