Unique Visitor Counter In Asp.Net

Introduction:

It is sometimes useful to display the number of visits a page on a Web site has experienced using a counter that's displayed as part of the page's content. While adding a counter to a page written in ASP or ASP.NET is relatively straight-forward, adding a counter to a plain HTML page (no scripting of any kind) is a little different.

This article describes a counter I created (see the following figure) using ASP.NET. . The code also maintains its own little "database" so that you don't have to FTP to your Web server to create a new counter. I use and designed this counter for my site listings and various other pages; so it is use a XMLfile to store the noumber of counts.

The Counter Lok like this image                      Visitor Count

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0

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Creating The Counter:

Firstly you have to create a project in VS Studio And also you have to add a XML file and name it HitCounter to store the Hit counts, in the Global.asax file Write Down the following code:

Global.asax
using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Collections;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Security;
using System.Web.SessionState;

namespace HitCounter
{
    public class Global : System.Web.HttpApplication
    {

        protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
           //  Code that runs on application start
        }

        protected void Application_End(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            //  Code that runs on application shutdown

        }

        void Session_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            //Get & increment visitor count
            UserVisitCount();

            DataSet tmpDs = new DataSet();
            try
            {
                tmpDs.ReadXml(Server.MapPath("~/App_Data/HitCounter.xml"));
            }
            catch (System.IO.FileNotFoundException)
            {
                throw;
            }
            catch
            {
                //no need to throw exception for this
            }

            //set in Session
            Session["hits"] = tmpDs.Tables[0].Rows[0]["hits"].ToString();
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Increments visit count on every user session
        /// </summary>
        private void UserVisitCount()
        {
            try
            {
                DataSet tmpDs = new DataSet();
                //read hit count
                tmpDs.ReadXml(Server.MapPath("~/App_Data/HitCounter.xml"));
                int hits = Int32.Parse(tmpDs.Tables[0].Rows[0]["hits"].ToString());

                hits += 1;

                //write hit count
                tmpDs.Tables[0].Rows[0]["hits"] = hits.ToString();
                tmpDs.WriteXml(Server.MapPath("~/App_Data/HitCounter.xml"));
            }
            catch (System.IO.FileNotFoundException)
            {
                throw;
            }
            catch
            {
                //no need to throw for this
            }
        }
    }
}

After Writing these code you have to take now a user control to to render the Hit Counter.And give the name HitCounterControl.ascx. in the code behind file write the following code: To generate the table for the counter to show on the web form.

UserControl:


HitCounterControl.ascx
<%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="HitCounterControl.ascx.cs"
    Inherits="RebelsWeb.SiteControls.HitCounterControl" %>
<div style="padding-top: 15px; text-align: center">
    <span style="font-size:small">Visitor Count </span>
    <asp:Literal ID="ltlCounter" runat="server"></asp:Literal>
</div>

HitCounterControl.ascx.cs

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Text;

namespace RebelsWeb.SiteControls
{
    public partial class HitCounterControl : System.Web.UI.UserControl
    {
        int totalDigits = 6;
        protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            if (!IsPostBack)
            {
                ltlCounter.Text = FormatHTMLCounter(Session["hits"].ToString());
            }
        }

       /// <summary>
       /// Calculates and formats the vistor count number
       /// </summary>
       /// <param name="visitCount"></param>
       /// <returns></returns>
        private string FormatHTMLCounter(string visitCount)
        {
            int noOfDigits = visitCount.Length;
            int zeroesToPrefix = totalDigits - noOfDigits;
            StringBuilder strCounterHtml = new StringBuilder();
          
            strCounterHtml.Append(@"<table align=""center"" style=""width: 120px; background-color: Black; color: White; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;""><tr>");

            for (int i = 0; i < zeroesToPrefix; i++)
            {
                strCounterHtml.Append(@"<td style=""border:1px solid white; padding:2px"">");
                strCounterHtml.Append("0");
                strCounterHtml.Append("</td>");
            }

            char[] visitCountChar = visitCount.ToCharArray();
            for (int i = 0; i < visitCountChar.Length; i++)
            {
                strCounterHtml.Append(@"<td style=""border:1px solid white; padding:2px"">");
                strCounterHtml.Append(visitCountChar[i]);
                strCounterHtml.Append("</td>");
            }

            strCounterHtml.Append("</tr></table>");
            return strCounterHtml.ToString();
        }
    }
}
Now, After writing these code you can put this user control on web form to display the counter.


Summary

This article described how to create a fast page hit counter that's easy to use with plain HTML. The code uses ASP.NET and the C#.NET programming language to, automatically creating new counters, and preventing users from artificially inflating the value of the counter.