Simple PHP Visitor Counter

Simple single file PHP visitor counter. Put it to your website PHP code folder and you are ready to go. This counter is just for personal or small scale websites.

This site is using this code now, you can check the footer of this site.

Features

1. Pure PHP, No other lib required, No configuration required
2. Fast, Simple and Easy to use
3. No database required, visitor’s data store in a csv file
4. File size is less than 5kb

How to use

Learn how to use this counter

Requirement

• PHP7 and above
• Write permission of the counter log file

#in the same directory as vcounter.php or your can define your csv file folder 
touch vstCnt.txt
sudo chmod 666 vstCnt.txt

Installation

Just put vcounter.php in your php src folder or wherever place it can be runned

In the homepage or the page need to count the visitor just try the following method to use it

<script type="text/javascript" src="vcounter.php?p=js"></script>     

GitHub

You can check repository on GitHub

Source Code

<?php

/**
 * Simple visitor counter
 * --
 * @author 		Jichiuo <zeng78 at gmail dot com>
 * @version 	1.0
 * @date 		2022-01-01
 * in your homepage you can use the following method to use it
 * <script type="text/javascript" src="vcounter.php?p=js"></script>     
 */

$vst_id = "";               // vistor id - session_id()
$filename = 'vstCnt.txt';   // the file store the online visitors count,the first line of this file is ip,timestamp,visitor_id
$timeon = 180;              // number of secconds to keep a user online , 3 mins here
$session_timeout = 1440;    // number of secconds to keep a session alive, 24 mins here
$delimiter = ',';           // characters used to separate the IP, time stamp and vistor id
$newVst = 0;                // if the visitor is new, this variable will be set to 1
$online = 0;                // number of online users
$today  = 0;                // total number of visitors today
$total  = 0;                // total number of visitors

/* if you find your today count is not correct, 
 * it may cause by the server timezone is different with your local timezone
 * you can set the timezone to your local timezone by the following code
 * and then you can get the correct count
 */
//set timezone
//date_default_timezone_set('Asia/Singapore');

//get visitor id from cookie
if (!isset($_COOKIE['vst_unique_id'])) {
    $newVst = 1;
    $vst_id = uniqid();
    //set cookie and will expire after $session_timeout,if user disable cookie, the counter will ignore it  
    setcookie('vst_unique_id', $vst_id, time() + $session_timeout, '/');
} else {
    $vst_id = $_COOKIE['vst_unique_id'];
}
// check if the file from $filename exists and is readable
if (is_readable($filename)) {
    //read the file and map to array
    $csv = array_map('str_getcsv', file($filename));
    array_walk($csv, function (&$a) use ($csv) {
        $a = array_combine($csv[0], $a);
    });
    array_shift($csv);
    $lstVstId = array_column($csv, 'visitor_id');
    $lstTimeStamp = array_reverse(array_column($csv, 'timestamp'));
} else {
    if (is_writable($filename)) {
        // if the file does not exist, create it
        $fp = fopen($filename, 'w');
        if (fwrite($fp, "ip,timestamp,visitor_id") === FALSE) {
            echo "Cannot write to file ($filename)";
        }
        fclose($fp);
    } else {
        // the file exists but is not writable
        echo "The file $filename is not writable";
    }
}
//check if the vistor id already in the lstVstId array
if (in_array($vst_id, $lstVstId)) {
    $newVst = 0;
}
//set online and total
//loop the lstTimestamp to check if the current time minus the time stamp is less than $timeon
foreach ($lstTimeStamp as $value) {
    if ((time() - intval($value)) < $timeon) {
        $online++;
        $today++;
    } else {
        //if read the value is greater than timeon value then all others in array will be greater than timeon value
        if (date('m/d/Y', time()) == date('m/d/Y', intval($value))) {
            $today++;
        } else {
            break;
        }
    }
}
$online = $online + $newVst; // now how many users online , approximate not accurate
if ($online == 0) {
    $online = 1;
}
$today = $today + $newVst; //today visitors
if ($today == 0) {
    $today = 1;
}
$total = count($lstVstId) + $newVst;  // total visitors
if ($total == 0) {
    $total = 1;
}
if ($newVst > 0) {
    // log the IP , timestamp and visitor id to the file
    $strNewLine = getUserIP() . $delimiter . time() . $delimiter . $vst_id;
    // write data in $filename
    if (!file_put_contents($filename, $strNewLine . PHP_EOL, FILE_APPEND | LOCK_EX)) {
        $strOut = 'Error: Recording file not exists, or is not writable';
    }
}

// the HTML code with data to be displayed
$strOut = '<span id="vstCnt"> Online: ' . $online . ' Today: ' . $today . ' Total: ' . $total . '</span>';

// if access from <script>, with GET 'p=js', adds the string to return into a JS statement
// in this way the script can also be included in .html files
if (isset($_GET['p']) && $_GET['p'] == 'js') {
    $strOut = "document.write('$strOut');";
}
// output /display the result
echo $strOut;

function getUserIP()
{
    // Get real visitor IP behind CloudFlare network
    if (isset($_SERVER["HTTP_CF_CONNECTING_IP"])) {
        $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] = $_SERVER["HTTP_CF_CONNECTING_IP"];
        $_SERVER['HTTP_CLIENT_IP'] = $_SERVER["HTTP_CF_CONNECTING_IP"];
    }
    $client  = @$_SERVER['HTTP_CLIENT_IP'];
    $forward = @$_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'];
    $remote  = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];

    if (filter_var($client, FILTER_VALIDATE_IP)) {
        $ip = $client;
    } elseif (filter_var($forward, FILTER_VALIDATE_IP)) {
        $ip = $forward;
    } else {
        $ip = $remote;
    }

    return $ip;
}