Question

I am working on a site that allows visitors to download various documents using this code:

<input type="button" class="downloadedFile" value="Download File" onclick="window.location.href=\'documents/' . $docsRow['docFileName'] . '\'" />

$docsRow[‘docFileName’] is the path of each document, which is retrieved from a MySQL database.

The bigger picture is that these documents are in a jQuery accordion, with each accordion pane being a class with one or more documents – like such:

<div id="accordion">
<h3><a href="#">LEAD5220 - Leader as Change Agent</a></h3>
<div>
    <p class="className">Leader as Change Agent</p>
    <p class="classNumber">LEAD5220</p>
        <hr class="classSeparator" />
        <table width="95%">
            <tr>
                <td><strong>Document Name:</strong> Generic Annotation Format</td>
                <td width="100px" align="right"><input type="button" class="downloadedFile" value="Download File" onclick="window.location.href='documents/Generic Annotation Format.docx'" /></td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td colspan="2"><strong>Description:</strong> This document can be used as a template for your annotations in the annotated bibliography forums.</td>
            </tr>
        </table>
        <hr class="classSeparator" />
        ...

My client wants to be able to count the number of times each document has been downloaded per class.

I known I can detect the button click via javascript, and as far as the “per class” part, I can use jQuery to detect in which class table the button clicked, but what I don’t understand is 1) how to get that info into PHP/MySQL code to record to the database, and 2) whether I can only detect the button click, or whether I can detect if the user actually downloaded the file to their computer (these are PDF, DOC, XLS files).

Thanks for anyone’s help!

Answer 1

There are 2 options to count the number of downloads. One is to link to a php page that records every hit and than redirects to the actual file. Something like:

<?
$class = $_REQUEST['class'];
$doc = $_REQUEST['doc'];

// insert the code here to get and update the number of hits to this class/doc

// now redirect
header('Location: http://www.example.com/thefile.doc');
    ?>

In the html the link can be something like:

<a href="getfile.php?class=X&doc=Y">download file</a>

The second approach, which I personally prefer, is to record the number of hits with ajax. When the user clicks the link to download do something like:

$('a.thelink').click( function() {
    $.post ('getfile.php', { class: X, doc: Y });
});

this way you send the data to be recorded, and the user stays in the same page.

If you need more clearifications let me know.