how to track visitors?

[Daniil Sosonkin]

Hello,

I'm at a lost. I need to track visitors who come to the site (IP, referer, browser, etc...) but I'm not sure how to do that in the best way. I thought of tracking unique visitor when a new session is created, but it seems to be impossible to get visitor's info when using SessionListener. But how else to am I suppose to get user's info whenever a new session is created?

Does anyone have any idea how to do tracking? Maybe someone can share their experience.

Help would be appreciated

D.

[rick zorich]

Look at this to get started.
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Web/Web_Languages/JSP/Q_20514811.html
Be sure to read Kenneth's final suggestions.

[rick zorich]

It would be nice if you posted your final code here.

[steve souza]

I would look for a free web log analyzer to do that kind of thing. My site uses webalizer and I like it.

http://www.mrunix.net/webalizer/

[Daniil Sosonkin]

I need to have live charts so webalizer won't help.

Thanks for the link, rick, sounds like a plan! I'll be working on it today and place results here.

[Daniil Sosonkin]

Ok, I've worked it out and now able to track visitors. Thanks for direction. The code is below. It only tracks and doesn't count current visitors (for that I have a SessionListener). Visits are stored in the database and allow for tracking of what visitor actually went through. This assumes that new session is a new visitor (maybe not entirely correct, but I just can't think of anything better). Enjoy:

Tracker.java (filter)
===============================

...
public class Tracker implements Filter
    {
        private FilterConfig conf;
 
        public void init(FilterConfig config) throws ServletException
            {
                conf = config;
            }
 
        public void doFilter(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response, FilterChain chain) throws IOException, ServletException
            {
                HttpServletRequest req = (HttpServletRequest)request;
                HttpSession session = req.getSession(true);
 
                String sID = session.getId();
                String IP = req.getRemoteAddr();
                String browser = req.getHeader("user-agent");
                String referer = req.getHeader("referer");
                String url = req.getRequestURI();
                String query = req.getQueryString();
                if (query != null)
                    url += "?" + query;
 
                try
                    {
                        if (session.isNew())
                            {
                                InsertStatement insert = new InsertStatement("tracker");
                                insert.addField("date_visited", new NOW());
                                insert.addField("time_visited", new NOW());
                                insert.addField("sID", sID);
                                insert.addField("IP", new INET_ATON(IP));
                                insert.addField("url", url);
                                if (browser != null) insert.addField("browser", browser);
                                if (referer != null) insert.addField("referer", referer);
                                insert.executeInsert();
                            }
                        else
                            {
                                InsertStatement insert = new InsertStatement("history");
                                insert.addField("sID", sID);
                                insert.addField("time_visited", new NOW());
                                insert.addField("referer", referer);
                                insert.addField("url", url);
                                insert.executeInsert();
                            }
                    }
                catch (JspException e)
                    {
                        throw new ServletException(e);
                    }
                catch (SQLException e)
                    {
                        throw new ServletException(e);
                    }
 
                chain.doFilter(request, response);
            }
 
        public void destroy()
            {
                conf = null;
            }
    }

web.xml
==========================================
<filter>
<filter-name>Tracker</filter-name>
<filter-class>com.fototalk.filters.Tracker</filter-class>
</filter>

<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>Tracker</filter-name>
<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>

[rick zorich]

Daniil, thanks for sharing. rick