dj-hitcount

Dj-Hitcount allows you to track the number of hits/views for a particular object.

Overview

Dj-Hitcount allows you to track the number of hits (views) for a particular object. This isn’t meant to be a full-fledged tracking application or a real analytic tool; it’s just a basic hit counter.

How one tracks a “hit” or “view” of a web page is not such a simple thing as it might seem. That’s why folks rely on Google Analytics or similar tools. It’s tough! This is a simple app with some settings and features that should suit the basic needs of smaller sites.

It comes ready to track hits with a HitCountDetailView and a HitCountJSONView (to use the out-of-the-box JavaScript method, you will need jQuery – although writing your own JavaScript implementation may not be hard).

Migrating from `django-hitcount`

Please see the guidelines for migration.

Installation and Usage

Install using pip.

$ python -m pip install dj-hitcount

If you want, you may install it from the source, grab the source code and run setup.py.

$ git clone git://github.com/abhiabhi94/dj-hitcount.git
$ cd dj-hitcount
$ python setup.py install

Add dj-hitcount to your INSTALLED_APPS:

# settings.py
INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'hitcount'
)

View the additional settings section for a list of the available settings that can be configured.

For a working implementation, you can view the example project on Github.

Counting Hits

The main business-logic for evaluating and counting a Hit is done in hitcount.mixins.HitCountViewMixin.hit_count(). You can use this static method directly in your own Views or you can use one of the Views packaged with this app.

HitCountJSONView: a JavaScript implementation which moves the business-logic to an Ajax View and hopefully speeds up page load times and eliminates some bot-traffic

HitCountDetailView: which provides a wrapper from Django’s generic DetailView and allows you to process the Hit as the view is loaded

HitCountMixin

This mixin can be used in your own class-based views or you can call the hit_count() method directly. The method takes two arguments, a HttpRequest and HitCount object it will return a namedtuple: UpdateHitCountResponse(hit_counted=Boolean, hit_message='Message').

hit_counted will be True if the hit was counted and False otherwise. hit_message will indicate by what means the Hit was either counted or ignored.

It works like this.

from hitcount.models import HitCount
from hitcount.mixins import HitCountViewMixin

# first get the related HitCount object for your model object
hit_count = HitCount.objects.get_for_object(your_model_object)

# next, you can attempt to count a hit and get the response
# you need to pass it the request object as well
hit_count_response = HitCountViewMixin.hit_count(request, hit_count)

# your response could look like this:
# UpdateHitCountResponse(hit_counted=True, hit_message='Hit counted: session key')
# UpdateHitCountResponse(hit_counted=False, hit_message='Not counted: session key has active hit')

To see this in action see the views.py code.

HitCountJSONView

The hitcount.views.HitCountJSONView can be used to handle an AJAX POST request. Dj-hitcount comes with a bundled jQuery plugin for speeding up the $.post process by handling the retrieval of the CSRF token for you.

If you wish to use the HitCountJSONView in your project you first need to update your urls.py file to include the following:

# urls.py
from django.urls import path

urlpatterns = [
    ...
    path('hitcount/', include('hitcount.urls', namespace='hitcount')),
]

Next, you will need to add the JavaScript Ajax request to your template. To do this, use the {% get_hit_count_js_variables for post as [var_name] %} template tag to get the ajax_url and hitcount_pk for your object. The hitcount_pk is needed for POST-ing to the HitCountJSONView.

Here is an example of how all this might work together with the bundled jQuery plugin. It is taken from the example project and the jQuery can be modified to suit your needs. In the example below it simply updates the template with the HitCountJSONView response after the Ajax call is complete.

{% load staticfiles %}
<script src="{% static 'hitcount/jquery.postcsrf.js' %}"></script>

{% load hitcount_tags %}
{% get_hit_count_js_variables for post as hitcount %}
<script type="text/javascript">
jQuery(document).ready(function($) {
  // use the template tags in our JavaScript call
  $.postCSRF("{{ hitcount.ajax_url }}", { hitcountPK : "{{ hitcount.pk }}" })
    .done(function(data){
      $('<i />').text(data.hit_counted).attr('id','hit-counted-value').appendTo('#hit-counted');
      $('#hit-response').text(data.hit_message);
  }).fail(function(data){
      console.log('POST failed');
      console.log(data);
  });
});
</script>

HitCountDetailView

The HitCountDetailView can be used to do the business-logic of counting the hits by setting count_hit=True. See the views section for more information about what else is added to the template context with this view.

Here is an example implementation from the example project:

from hitcount.views import HitCountDetailView

class PostCountHitDetailView(HitCountDetailView):
    model = Post        # your model goes here
    count_hit = True    # set to True if you want it to try and count the hit

Note

Unlike the JavaScript implementation (above), this View will do all the HitCount processing before the content is delivered to the user; if you have a large dataset of Hits or exclusions, this could slow down page load times. It will also be triggered by web crawlers and other bots that may not have otherwise executed the JavaScript.

Displaying Hits

There are different methods for displaying hits:

Template Tags: provide a robust way to get related counts.
Views: allows you to wrap a class-based view and inject additional context into your template.
Models: can have a generic relation to their respective HitCount.

Template Tags

For a more granular approach to viewing the hits for a related object you can use the get_hit_count template tag.

# remember to load the tags first
{% load hitcount_tags %}

# Return total hits for an object:
{% get_hit_count for [object] %}

# Get total hits for an object as a specified variable:
{% get_hit_count for [object] as [var] %}

# Get total hits for an object over a certain time period:
{% get_hit_count for [object] within ["days=1,minutes=30"] %}

# Get total hits for an object over a certain time period as a variable:
{% get_hit_count for [object] within ["days=1,minutes=30"] as [var] %}

Views

The hitcount.views.HitCountDetailView extends Django’s generic DetailView and injects an additional context variable hitcount.

{# the primary key for the hitcount object #}
{{ hitcount.pk }}

{# the total hits for the object #}
{{ hitcount.total_hits }}

If you have set count_hit=True (see: HitCountDetailView) two additional variables will be set.

{# whether or not the hit for this request was counted (true/false) #}
{{ hitcount.hit_counted }}

{# the message form the UpdateHitCountResponse #}
{{ hitcount.hit_message }}

Models

Note

You are not required to do anything specific with your models; dj-hitcount relies on a GenericForeignKey to create the relationship to your model’s HitCount.

If you would like to add a reverse lookup in your own model to its related HitCount you can utilize the hitcount.mixins.HitCountModelMixin.

from django.db import models

from hitcount.mixins import HitCountModelMixin
from hitcount.conf import settings as hitcount_settings

# here is an example model with a GenericRelation
class MyModel(models.Model, HitCountMixin):

  # adding a generic relationship makes sorting by Hits possible:
  # MyModel.objects.order_by("hit_count_generic__hits")
  hit_count_generic = GenericRelation(
      hitcout_settings.HITCOUNT_HITCOUNT_MODEL,
      object_id_field='object_pk',
      related_query_name='hit_count_generic_relation'
  )

# you would access your hit_count like so:
my_model = MyModel.objects.get(pk=1)
my_model.hit_count.hits                 # total number of hits
my_model.hit_count.hits_in_last(days=7) # number of hits in last seven days

Customization

dj-hitcount allows you to customize HitCount model.

Define your own hitcount model inherited from HitCountBase.

Now when models.py in your application has the definition of a custom hitcount model, you need to instruct Django to use it for your project instead of a built-in one:

# Somewhere in your settings.py do the following.
# Here `myapp` is the name of your application, `MyHitCount` is the names of your customized model.

HITCOUNT_HITCOUNT_MODEL = 'myapp.MyHitCount'

Run manage.py migrate to install your customized models into DB.

Additional Settings

There are a few additional settings you can use to customize dj-hitcount by using them in your settings.py file.

HITCOUNT_USE_IP

This tells whether to store the IP address from the request. Defaults to True for backwards compatibility with django-hitcount.

Warning

The default value for HITCOUNT_USE_IP will change to False in the next major version bump(if a lot of things go well, then in v2.0.0). Explicitly set it to True to use IP.

HITCOUNT_KEEP_HIT_ACTIVE

This is the number of days, weeks, months, hours, etc (using a timedelta keyword argument), that an Hit is kept active. If a Hit is active a repeat viewing will not be counted. After the active period ends, however, a new Hit will be recorded. You can decide how long you want this period to last and it is probably a matter of preference.:

# default value
HITCOUNT_KEEP_HIT_ACTIVE = { 'days': 7 }

HITCOUNT_HITS_PER_IP_LIMIT

Limit the number of active Hits from a single IP address. 0 means that it is unlimited.:

# default value
HITCOUNT_HITS_PER_IP_LIMIT = 0

HITCOUNT_HITS_PER_SESSION_LIMIT

Limit the number of active Hits from a single browser session. 0 means it is unlimited.:

# default value
HITCOUNT_HITS_PER_SESSION_LIMIT = 0

HITCOUNT_EXCLUDE_USER_GROUP

Exclude Hits from all users in the specified user groups. By default, this is set to an empty list (all users counted). In the example, below, it will exclude all your ‘Editors’.:

# example value, default is empty tuple
HITCOUNT_EXCLUDE_USER_GROUP = ( 'Editor', )

HITCOUNT_KEEP_HIT_IN_DATABASE

Hits remain in the database indefinitely unless you run the hitcount_cleanup management command. This setting specifies a timedelta within which to keep/save Hits. Any Hit older than the time specified will be removed from the Hits table.:

# default value
HITCOUNT_KEEP_HIT_IN_DATABASE = { 'days': 30 }

Management Commands

By default, your Hits remain in the database indefinitely. If you would like to periodically prune your stale Hits you can do so by running the the management command hitcount_cleanup.:

./manage.py hitcount_cleanup

The command relies on the setting HITCOUNT_KEEP_HIT_IN_DATABASE to determine how far back to prune. See the additional settings section for more information.

Real World Example

There is an example project that tries to demonstrate the functionality of this app. You can get it working using the Django development server. Be sure to run this inside your own virtualenv:

$ git clone git@github.com:abhiabhi94/dj-hitcount.git
$ pip install -r dev-requirements.txt
$ python -m django --settings=test.settings migrate  # will load some data fixtures for you
$ python -m django --settings=test.settings createsuperuser  # for access to the admin portion
$ python -m django --settings=test.settings runserver        # should be all set!

When you are ready to work on your own site, check out the Installation and Usage and Additional Settings sections.

Contributing to DJ HitCount

There are many ways to contribute to the project. You may improve the documentation, address a bug, add some feature to the code or do something else. All sort of contributions are welcome.

Development

To start development on this project, fork this repository and follow the following instructions.

# clone the forked repository
$ git clone YOUR_FORKED_REPO_URL

# create a virtual environment
$ python3 -m venv venv
# activate the virtual environment(unix users)
$ . venv/bin/activate
# activate the virtual environment(window users)
$ venv\Scripts\activate
# install dependencies
(venv) $ pip install -e . Django -r dev-requirements.txt pre-commit
# migrate the migrations to the database and also creates some placeholder data
(venv) $ python manage.py migrate
# start the development server
(venv) $ python manage.py runserver

Testing

To run tests against a particular python and django version installed inside your virtual environment, you may use:

(venv) $ pytest

This skips the selenium tests which are a bit slow to run. To run them as well use

(venv) $ pytest --runslow

You may have to install firefox and gecko-driver to run these successfully.

To run tests against all supported python and django versions, you may run:

# install dependency
(venv) $ pip install tox
# run tests
(venv) $ tox

Changelog

1.2.0

Confirm support for python 3.10 (#19).
Add a setting for limiting hits per single browser session (#16).
Respect the setting for limiting hits per IP before counting a hit (#18).

1.1.0

Confirm support for python 3.10-dev (#11).
Optimize query for saving of increased and decreased hits(#10).
Prevent compiling of regex for IP detection on every import of hitcount.utils (#8)

1.0.1

Fix saving of anonymous sessions(#4).

1.0.0

Bring back project to life.
Change in project structure
- signals
  
  delete_hit_count from hitcount.models has been moved to hitcount.signals.
  
  The argument save_hitcount to the function delete_hit_count_handler (this process the signal delete_hit_count) is now keyword-only. The earlier design pattern was a case of boolean-trap.
- mixins
  
  HitCountMixin from hitcount.models has been renamed as HitCountModelMixin and moved to hitcount.mixins.
  
  HitCountMixin from hitcount.views has been renamed as HitCountViewMixin and moved to hitcount.mixins.
- models
  
  BlackListIP renamed to BlockedIP.
  
  BlackListUserAgent renamed to BlockedUserAgent.
  
  The ip field for Hit model has been made optional. This hopefully makes the project GDPR compliant. Please open an issue if still isn’t.
  
  To maintain backwards compatibility with django-hitcount, an additional setting HITCOUNT_USE_IP has been added.
- views
  
  hitcount.views.update_hit_count_ajax that was to be removed in django-hitcount 1.2 has been removed. Use hitcount.views.HitCountJSONView instead.
  
  hitcount.views._update_hit_count that was to be removed in django-hitcount 1.2 has been removed. Use hitcount.mixins.HitCountViewMixin.hit_count instead.
- removed additional dependency of django-etc.
- added additional unit tests. Test coverage is now 100%.

Migrating from django-hitcount

The project has been built with the idea to make the migrations as smooth as possible. After installation of dj-hitcount, run the migrations command to make the appropriate changes to the database (see the models section in this list for specifics).

python manage.py migrate hitcount

You will also have to make some changes if you were using any one of the following:

signals

delete_hit_count from hitcount.models has been moved to hitcount.signals.

The argument save_hitcount to the function delete_hit_count_handler (this process the signal delete_hit_count) is now keyword-only. The earlier design pattern was a case of boolean-trap.

mixins

HitCountMixin from hitcount.models has been renamed as HitCountModelMixin and moved to hitcount.mixins.

HitCountMixin from hitcount.views has been renamed as HitCountViewMixin and moved to hitcount.mixins.

models

BlackListIP renamed to BlockedIP.

BlackListUserAgent renamed to BlockedUserAgent.

The ip field for Hit model has been made optional. This hopefully makes the project GDPR compliant. Please open an issue if still isn’t.

To maintain backwards compatibility with django-hitcount, an additional setting HITCOUNT_USE_IP has been added.

views

hitcount.views.update_hit_count_ajax that was to be removed in django-hitcount 1.2 has been removed. Use hitcount.views.HitCountJSONView instead.

hitcount.views._update_hit_count that was to be removed in django-hitcount 1.2 has been removed. Use hitcount.mixins.HitCountViewMixin.hit_count instead.

removed additional dependency of django-etc.

Issues

Use the GitHub issue tracker for dj-hitcount to submit bugs, issues, and feature requests.