On Mon, 2010-07-12 at 14:52 -0400, Gary wrote:
> I'm sure it is possible, but I am unsure how to do this. I have created a
> Sale coupon that I was going to put up on a site that I manage, for visitors
> to print out and bring to the store. The coupon is currently a .png, however
> I was planning on converting to a pdf. I would like to put on the coupon a
> serial number that increases by 1 everytime the page is viewed. I dont
> really care if someone refreshes the page and skews the numbers.
>
> Is this possible and could someone give me some help?
>
> Thanks
>
> Gary
>
>
>
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You need some indicator on your server to keep track of the number. To
me, the ideal solution would appear to be a MySQL database. You can set
up a table with an auto_increment field and use the id generated from
that.
Two things to maybe note:
1. Don't use MAX(id) in a query to get the next auto value, use
something like mysql_insert_id() instead. The MAX() method is
just a race condition waiting to happen.
2. If you expect a lot of traffic, then consider setting this table
to use the InnoDB engine instead of MyIsam which is usually the
default. This allows MySQL to apply row-level locking instead of
table-level, which can improve performance when PHP has to wait
for MySQL.
Thanks,
Ash
http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk
