how to build unique visitors counter with codeigniter show to countor?

In this tutorial you will learn how to build unique visitor counter with Codeigniter.with simple and more effective ways. This way have also another feature. It will save more performance and more database query usage by using cookie 

 First step I will suppose you will already have articles table like this on the code here:

            CREATE TABLE

IF NOT EXISTS `article` (

            `article_id` INT (11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,

            `article_cat_id` INT (11) NOT NULL,

            `article_name` VARCHAR (255) NOT NULL,

            `article_slug` VARCHAR (255) NOT NULL,

            `article_body` text NOT NULL,

            `img_link` VARCHAR (255) DEFAULT NULL,

            `article_state` TINYINT (1) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',

            `article_views` INT (11) NOT NULL,

            `article_created` INT (11) NOT NULL,

            PRIMARY KEY (`article_id`)

) ENGINE = INNODB DEFAULT CHARSET = utf8 AUTO_INCREMENT = 6; 

If you don’t have article_views column then you should add this column. You will use this column to increase counter with every visit to your article page

The second step I will suppose you will already have function to show articles like this - See more at:

            // Function Show_article($slug){

                        //          $this->add_count($slug);

                        // }  

                        function Show_article($slug){

                                    $this->add_count($slug);                      

                        }

                        // This is the counter function..

                        function add_count($slug) {

                         // load cookie helper

                                    $this->load->helper('cookie');

                        // this line will return the cookie which has slug name

                                    $check_visitor = $this->input->cookie(urldecode($slug), FALSE);

                                    // echo $check_visitor;exit;

                        // this line will return the visitor ip address

                           $ip = $this->input->ip_address();

               // if the visitor visit this article for first time then //

               //set new cookie and update article_views column ..

               //you might be notice we used slug for cookie name and ip

                //address for value to distinguish between articles views

                           if ($check_visitor == false) {

                                    $cookie = array( "name" => urldecode($slug), "value" => "$ip", "expire" => time() + 7200, "secure" => false );

                                    $this->input->set_cookie($cookie);

                                    $this->news->update_counter(urldecode($slug));

                        }

            }

The last step to update database counter in the article model –like the code here:

            // ----------------------------------------------hit countor--------------------

            function update_counter($slug) {

                        //return current article views

                        $this->db->where('entry_slug', urldecode($slug));

                        $this->db->select('entry_views');

                        $count = $this->db->get('entry')->row();

                        $this->db->where('entry_slug', urldecode($slug));

                        $this->db->set('entry_views', ($count->entry_views + 1));

                        $this->db->update('entry');

            }