Laravel Unique Visitor Counter

Laravel Unique Visitor Counter

In order to implement a unique visitor counter in Laravel, you can follow the steps below:

1. Create a new migration using the php artisan make:migration command. For example:

php artisan make:migration create_visitor_counter_table --create=visitor_counter

2. In the generated migration file, define the necessary columns for the visitor_counter table. You would typically need columns like ip_address and visited_at to track the visitor’s IP address and the timestamp of the visit.

use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;

class CreateVisitorCounterTable extends Migration
{
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::create('visitor_counter', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->id();
            $table->string('ip_address');
            $table->timestamp('visited_at')->useCurrent();
            $table->timestamps();
        });
    }

    public function down()
    {
        Schema::dropIfExists('visitor_counter');
    }
}

3. Run the migration to create the visitor_counter table in your database:

php artisan migrate

4. Create a new middleware using the php artisan make:middleware command. For example:

php artisan make:middleware TrackVisitor

5. In the generated middleware file, add the necessary logic to track the visitor’s IP address and save it in the visitor_counter table. You can use the request() helper function to access the current request’s IP address:

namespace App\Http\Middleware;

use Closure;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;

class TrackVisitor
{
    public function handle($request, Closure $next)
    {
        $ipAddress = $request->ip();

        DB::table('visitor_counter')->insert([
            'ip_address' => $ipAddress,
        ]);

        return $next($request);
    }
}

6. Register the middleware in the app/Http/Kernel.php file by adding it to the $middleware array:

protected $middleware = [
    // Other middlewares
    \App\Http\Middleware\TrackVisitor::class,
];

7. Finally, you can retrieve the count of unique visitors by querying the visitor_counter table:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;

public function uniqueVisitorsCount()
{
    return DB::table('visitor_counter')->distinct('ip_address')->count();
}

With the above steps, you will have a visitor_counter table that keeps track of unique visitors based on their IP addresses. The middleware is responsible for inserting a new record with the visitor’s IP address whenever a request is made to your Laravel application.

Note that the above code snippets are just examples, and you may need to modify them according to your specific requirements.