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Introduction:

In web development, tracking Add Post Visitor Counter or Post View Counter is a common requirement for content-based applications. Laravel, a popular PHP framework, provides an elegant and efficient way to implement this feature. In this article, we will walk through the process of counting post readings and views in Laravel, with practical code examples for a better understanding.

Requirements: Before we begin, ensure that you have a Laravel project set up with a database configured. For this example, we’ll assume you have a ‘posts’ table in your database.

Step 1:

Database Migration Let’s start by creating a migration for the ‘posts’ table to include columns for post readings and views.

php artisan make:migration add_readings_and_views_to_posts_table --table=posts

Open the generated migration file and update the up method:

public function up()
{
    Schema::table('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
        $table->unsignedInteger('readings')->default(0);
        $table->unsignedInteger('views')->default(0);
    });
}

Now, run the migration to apply these changes to the database:

php artisan migrate

Step 2:

Model Update Next, update the ‘Post’ model to include the new columns. Open the ‘Post’ model (usually located in the ‘app’ directory) and add the following lines:

protected $fillable = [
    // your existing fillable fields
    'readings',
    'views',
];

Step 3:

Displaying Post Readings and Views Now, let’s display the readings and views on the post detail page. Open the controller responsible for handling post details (e.g., ‘PostController.php’) and update the ‘show’ method:

public function show(Post $post)
{
    // Increment views when a post is viewed
    $post->increment('views');

    return view('posts.show', compact('post'));
}

In your blade view (‘posts/show.blade.php’), you can now display the readings and views:

<h1>{{ $post->title }}</h1>
<p>{{ $post->content }}</p>

<div>
    Readings: {{ $post->readings }}
</div>

<div>
    Views: {{ $post->views }}
</div>

Step 4:

Counting Post Readings To count readings, you can implement a similar approach. In your application logic (e.g., when a user clicks on a ‘Read More’ button), increment the ‘readings’ count:

public function readMore(Post $post)
{
    // Increment readings when a post is read
    $post->increment('readings');

    return redirect()->route('posts.show', $post);
}

This assumes you have a route and a corresponding method in your controller to handle the ‘readMore’ action.

Conclusion:

By following these steps, you’ve successfully implemented post readings and views counting in a Laravel application. This feature can be further extended based on your specific requirements, such as adding timestamps for more detailed tracking or implementing user-specific counts. Laravel’s simplicity and expressive syntax make it easy to integrate such functionality into your web applications.

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