Using a Server-Side Include counter on your web page
This code has been compiled and used on HPUX here at Chico State. If
you're elsewhere, your mileage may vary. Here are the steps to set this
up:
- Make sure server-side includes are running on your server
- Get the counter.c program
- Modify and compile it
- Touch the counter file
- Add the server-side include directive to your web page
- Rename your web page, if necessary
- Set permissions
Make sure server-side includes are running on your server
If they aren't, this information is useless. If you don't know for
sure, you can try digging through your http server's config files to see
for yourself. Or you could contact your webmaster.
This is easy. Just click on the above link and get the program. Stick
it in the directory you want to have the counter in.
Modify and compile it
This might be easy, depending on which flavor of Unix you're running.
If it barfs on the lockf(), you might have to use
flock() instead. (Look it up in the man page.) If neither
work, you can lock the counter file with fcntl(). If that
doesn't work, well, just chop the locking code out of there--you
probably don't even need it.
Oh! You for sure need to edit the line at the top of counter.c that
defines where your counter file is (".counter",the one that
holds the count of the visitors.) Then you can compile it.
On HPUX, it compiles with:
cc -Ae -o counter counter.c
But most compilers can leave off the "-Ae" nonsense.
Touch the counter file
You need to create the counter file before your counter will work. Take
the exact same file name and path you specified in counter.c on that
#define line and touch it:
touch /home/foo/public_html/.counter
Add the server-side include directive to your web page
You need to add a specialized comment tag to your web page right where
you want the count to show up. This comment will run the counter
program, and put everything that the counter program prints right there
in the web document. The counter program is going to print a number,
which is the count of the visitors so far.
Here is the comment to add:
<!--#exec cmd="/user/foo/public_html/counter" -->
Whereever you put that in your web page, the count will appear instead.
Mind you, that path points to the compiled counter.c file, not
the .counter file you touched earlier.
If you're using Netscape's server, you might want to add this comment
before the counter comment:
<!--#config errmsg="" -->
That prevents some crazy error output that Netscape is fond of. We
don't use Netscape's server here at Chico, so we don't need this
comment.
Rename your web page, if necessary
Some servers, like ours at Chico, only process server-side includes if
the web page has a specific extension. This is to save the http server
from crunching through every single web page, most of which will not
have any server-side includes. Again, check out the http server config
files or talk to your webmaster if you're unsure about this naming
convention.
You must use the extension ".shtml" on your web pages instead
of ".html" or the server-side include will not inject anything
into your page. For instance, my home page is "index.shtml" so
the counter works. If I rename it to "index.html", the counter
will cease to function.
Set permissions
Since the http server is going to run your counter program,
it's going to run as httpd (or whatever user your server runs
as) and not as you. This presents a problem, since no one else can
update the .counter file without permissions.
There are two solutions, but you should only implement one of them:
- Make your counter program SUID
- Set the permissions on .counter to world-writable
You can make your counter program SUID by doing this:
chmod 4755 counter
or you can make your .counter file world-writable by doing
this:
chmod 666 .counter
That's it!
beej@ecst.csuchico.edu
Copyright © 1996 Brian "Beej" Hall
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