[Django]-Track the number of "page views" or "hits" of an object?

You should use the django built-in session framework, it already does a lot of this for you. I implemented this in the following way with a Q&A app where I wanted to track views:

in models.py:

class QuestionView(models.Model):
    question = models.ForeignKey(Question, related_name='questionviews', on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    ip = models.CharField(max_length=40)
    session = models.CharField(max_length=40)
    created = models.DateTimeField(default=datetime.datetime.now())

in views.py:

def record_view(request, question_id):

    question = get_object_or_404(Question, pk=question_id)

    if not QuestionView.objects.filter(
                    question=question,
                    session=request.session.session_key):
        view = QuestionView(question=question,
                            ip=request.META['REMOTE_ADDR'],
                            created=datetime.datetime.now(),
                            session=request.session.session_key)
        view.save()

    return HttpResponse(u"%s" % QuestionView.objects.filter(question=question).count())

Vikingosegundo is probably right though that using content-type is probably the more reusable solution but definitely don’t reinvent the wheel in terms of tracking sessions, Django already does that!

Last thing, you should probably have the view that records the hit be either called via Ajax or a css link so that search engines don’t rev up your counts.

Hope that helps!

You could create a generic Hit model

class Hit(models.Model):
    date = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)
    content_type = models.ForeignKey(ContentType)
    object_id = models.PositiveIntegerField()
    content_object = generic.GenericForeignKey('content_type', 'object_id')

In your view.py you write this function:

def render_to_response_hit_count(request,template_path,keys,response):
    for  key in keys:
        for i in response[key]:
             Hit(content_object=i).save()
    return render_to_response(template_path, response)

and the views that you are interested in return

return render_to_response_hit_count(request,   'map/list.html',['list',],
        {
            'list': l,
        })

This approach gives you the power, not only to count the hit, but to filter the hit-history by time, contenttype and so on…

As the hit-table might be growing fast, you should think about a deletion strategy.

I know this question is an old one and also thornomad has put an app to solve the problem and inspire me with me solution. I would like to share this solution since I didn’t find much information about this topic and it may help someone else.
My approach is to make a generic model can be used with any view based on the view path (url).

models.py

class UrlHit(models.Model):
    url     = models.URLField()
    hits    = models.PositiveIntegerField(default=0)

    def __str__(self):
        return str(self.url)

    def increase(self):
        self.hits += 1
        self.save()


class HitCount(models.Model):
    url_hit = models.ForeignKey(UrlHit, editable=False, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    ip      = models.CharField(max_length=40)
    session = models.CharField(max_length=40)
    date    = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)

views.py

def get_client_ip(request):
    x_forwarded_for = request.META.get('HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR')
    if x_forwarded_for:
        ip = x_forwarded_for.split(',')[0]
    else:
        ip = request.META.get('REMOTE_ADDR')
    return ip

def hit_count(request):
    if not request.session.session_key:
        request.session.save()
    s_key = request.session.session_key
    ip = get_client_ip(request)
    url, url_created = UrlHit.objects.get_or_create(url=request.path)

    if url_created:
        track, created = HitCount.objects.get_or_create(url_hit=url, ip=ip, session=s_key)
        if created:
            url.increase()
            request.session[ip] = ip
            request.session[request.path] = request.path
    else:
        if ip and request.path not in request.session:
            track, created = HitCount.objects.get_or_create(url_hit=url, ip=ip, session=s_key)
            if created:
                url.increase()
                request.session[ip] = ip
                request.session[request.path] = request.path
    return url.hits

I did this by creating a model PageViews and making a column “Hits” in it. Every time when Homepage url is hit. I increment the first and only row of column Hit and render it to the template. Here how it looks.

Views.py

def Home(request):

    if(PageView.objects.count()<=0):
        x=PageView.objects.create()
        x.save()
    else:
        x=PageView.objects.all()[0]
        x.hits=x.hits+1
        x.save()
    context={'page':x.hits}
    return  render(request,'home.html',context=context)

Models.py

class PageView(models.Model):
    hits=models.IntegerField(default=0)

I did it using cookies. Don’t know if it’s a good idea to do that or not. The following code looks for an already set cookie first if it exists it increases the total_view counter if it is not there the it increases both total_views and unique_views. Both total_views and unique_views are a field of a Django model.

def view(request):
    ...
    cookie_state = request.COOKIES.get('viewed_post_%s' % post_name_slug)
    response = render_to_response('community/post.html',context_instance=RequestContext(request, context_dict))
    if cookie_state:
        Post.objects.filter(id=post.id).update(total_views=F('total_views') + 1)
    else:
        Post.objects.filter(id=post.id).update(unique_views=F('unique_views') + 1)
        Post.objects.filter(id=post.id).update(total_views=F('total_views') + 1)
                        response.set_cookie('viewed_post_%s' % post_name_slug , True, max_age=2678400)
    return response