HitCounter

Self-hosted Ruby version of that old 90s chestnut, <BLINK>the web-site hit counter</BLINK>.

Installation

Install the gem and supporting files.

Gemfile

  gem 'hit_counter'

Run:

  bundle
  rake hit_counter:install

Add a controller action to your app.

application_controller.rb

  def hit_counter
    return if params[:url].blank?

    # find or create a hit counter for this URL
    hc = HitCounter.get params[:url]

    # increase the tally by one
    hc.increment

    # get the image as a blob and stream it to the browser
    send_data hc.image(params[:style]).to_blob,
              disposition: 'inline',
              filename: "#{hc.hits}.png",
              type: :png
 end

routes.rb

 get 'hit-counter' => 'application#hit_counter'
 # technically should be POST/PUT, but GET makes integration simpler

Add the hit-counter image tag to your site's HTML:

  <img alt="Hit Counter" border="0" src="/hit-counter?url=https://cnn.com&style=1" />

Or try it out in irb with:

require './spec/spec_helper'
hc = HitCounter.get('cnn.com')

Customizing the Hit-Counter Image

Use an Existing Style

Name	Style number
Celtic
Odometer
Scout

You can use one of the three included styles by specifying a different style param in the HTML:

  <img alt="Hit Counter" border="0" src="/hit-counter?url=cnn.com&style=1" />

Create Your Own Style

To add your own style, create a PNG for each of the digits, 0.png through 9.png. Save the images in a folder named after your new style in public/images/digits.
In your controller, declare a new STYLES constant and add the folder name to it:
```
  HitCounter::STYLES = %w(odometer scout celtic folder_name)
```
In your HTML, specify the new style with a style param equal to its index in the array plus one (unlike arrays, the style param's index is one-based):
```
  <img alt="Hit Counter" border="0" src="/hit-counter?url=cnn.com&style=4" />
```

Documentation

Complete RDoc documentation is available at RubyDoc.info.

hit_counter