How to only send unique outgoing visitors

[ashish2005]

Ok, I have just set up a traffic trade like thing with my website. There is a link say "A" which does not change and is something like mysite.com/goto.php?id=1

That id = 1 queries the mysql and gets a random url out of all the urls under the id 1 . Now I want that random url to be selected in such a way that it is not repeated again when the url is clicked again.

How do I do it? Is it with the help of cookies?

[rocknbil]

Either that, or sessionID, or set one cookie, and somewhere in a database add the entries that have been viewed by this user. Example one:

Check for a cookie with the name for this purpose first. if found, use this as the visitor's "id." If not, set a new one.

- Collect a "list" of URL id's to pull from.

select id from url_list . . .
array_push($url_list,$id)....

- Get any already-viewed id's from the database for this user . . .

select url_id from sessionviews where user='$sessionid"....
array_push($user_urls,$id)....

(Note: I use url_id because this should be numeric, it would be quite a bit slower matching on a full url - text - value.)

- Before doing anything, check if the length of $user_urls == the length of $url_list. If they are the same, you've completed the loop. Delete all entries from the database matching this user id, unset $user_urls, and pick a new random ID. Enter the new id in the database, display the url.

- If the two arrays are NOT the same length, remove all the "viewed" id's in $user_urls from the $url_list array, which makes only un-viewed ones available in $url_list. Randomly pick one, enter it's id into the database, display the url.

Example 2:

- Just like above, get your available URL ID's into an array.

- Check the cookie, except in this case your cookie value should be a delimited list, adding ID's as they are viewed:

URLVIEWS=325343344356456544645,2,4,7,8;

Explode the cookie on the commas;
$user_urls = explode(',',$cookie);

- Shift the first item off the array. This is your user id.
$uid = array_shift($user_urls);

- What's left in $user_urls is the url_id's already viewed. The same rules apply: if the length of $user_urls == $url_list, you're done with the loop, unset it and pic a new random.

- If the two arrays are NOT the same length, remove all the $user_urls from $url_list, and pick a random from what's left in $url_list.

- In either case, re-set the cookie that includes the same user ID and new URL ID, display the URL.

The advantage to this way is there's no need for a database, but there are limitations to cookie lengths so if you have thousands of URL's it may fail.

Probably better ways to do it, but these will work.

[ashish2005]

I am quite a newbie in this. I tried to put all the url ids in an array. And I get something like this in the array

Array ( [0] => 533 ) Array ( [0] => 534 ) Array ( [0] => 535 ) Array ( [0] => 536 ) Array ( [0] => 537 ) Array ( [0] => 606 ) Array ( [0] => 607 ) Array ( [0] => 768 )

[ashish2005]

anyone? please help me out here.

[eelixduppy]

How are you putting them in an array? Doesn't seem like you are doing it correctly as you are getting multiple arrays here. Please post the relevant code.

[ashish2005]

This is how I tried to put the urls in the arrays

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($sql)) {
$urls = $row['url'];
$id = $row['id'];
$url_list = array();
array_push($url_list,$id);
}

[eelixduppy]

Try taking this line out of the loop and put it before...

$url_list = array();
while(...

You are resetting the value of the array with each iteration.