Question

Currently, I have the following PHP code loaded every time the page is refreshed. I am trying to update the views column +1 every time the page is loaded. To do this, I first retrive the previous views value from the table, then run another query to add + to that number. The problem that is occurring is every time I refresh the page, The code somehow adds two instead of 1. So instead of the $viewsA variable increasing by +1, it is increasing by +2.

$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM Games WHERE pagename = '$game' ");

WHILE($datarows = mysql_fetch_array($query)):

    $title = $datarows['title'];
    $description = $datarows['desc'];
    $img_url = $datarows['img'];
    $cat = $datarows['cat'];
    $pagename = $datarows['page'];
    $rating = $datarows['rat'];
    $viewsA = $datarows['view_count'];
    $gameid = $datarows['id'];

endwhile;

$updateviews = $viewsA +1;


mysql_query("UPDATE  `trainw_games`.`Games` SET  `view_count` =  '$updateviews' WHERE  `Games`.`id` = $gameid;");

What do I need to change to make it only add +1 to the views column?

Answer 1

I don’t think that a while loop is appropriate for this problem. I would recommend to echo $viewsA . '-' . $updateviews; to see what the value is before and after the add.

But, why not just run a single UPDATE statement?

UPDATE Games SET view_count = view_count + 1 WHERE Games.id = $gameid

Of course, you should stop using mysql_ functions and use either MySQLi or PDO:

$stmt = $mysqli->prepare("UPDATE Games SET view_count = view_count + 1 WHERE Games.id = ?"); 
$stmt->bind_param($gameid);
$stmt->execute();
$stmt->close();