WWW Homepage Access Counter and Clock!

Three-in-one (Counter+Clock+Date)

[Count Release 2.2]

Latest Release: January 16, 1996
Initial Release: April 13, 1995

If you see the counter, clock or date image as 888888, then you are using a browser which can not be trusted. For untrusted browsers, no counter hit is recorded, no time or date is displayed and the literal digit string is displayed. This feature guarantees that the counter can not be accessed remotely to mess up the datafile from a browser like yours. I consider a browser untrusted if it does not return the environment variable HTTP_REFERER. Some entries in the log file are made including the browser type.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Features
• Digit styles
• Obtaining source archive
• Directory Structure
• Steps to compile and install
• Test the program from command line
• How to call the program from web page?
• Examples
• What is "Counter Terrorism"? And how this program handles it?
• Error messages
• Frequently asked questions
• Copyright
• Acknowledgment
• Authors
• Please Add your URL!
• Web pages using the counter
• I like to hear from you
• ChangeLog (if you contributed, your name is there)

Introduction

This is a CGI program to keep record of the raw hits of a web page. It generates a GIF image of the number of hits and returns to the browser as an in-lined image. The program also has run-time option not to show the digit images, this way the hits can be kept without displaying it. The hits can be be monitored without incrementing from a separate page as well. Almost all of the features are run-time options. The hits are no way accurate. Someone can reload the page again and again to increase the hits. However, people like to see how many times someone visited their page. The same program can be used to count hits for any number of web pages for any number of users. The program can be used to display time or date as well. The time or date of any place in the word can be displayed by specifying a timezone string for that location. The date can be formatted in any combination of MMDDYY (Month-Day-Year). This program started as a fun to play with CGI programming but due to enormous interest, and feature request, it has turned in to the most configurable counter on the web.

The program is distributed as a gzip'd tar archive. If you do not have gzip/gunzip, it's available at: prep.ai.mit.edu.

Features

• Does not require server-side includes.

• Reasonable default for all QUERY_DTRING parameters.

• The same program can be used to display time or date.

• The time and date of any place in the world can be displayed.

• Supports digit images with variable width.

• Counter can be displayed without incrementing (for monitoring etc.)

• A literal digit string can be displayed.

• A random digit string can be displayed.

• The color of the digits can be negated.

• The counter can be rotated (only integral of 90 degrees, 90,180,270). The default rotation is 270 degrees.

• An ornamental 3D frame can be wrapped around the counter image with user defined thickness and color at run time.

• The frame and transparent color can be a name (e.g. red,green,pink etc.). The color can be specified as a hex string, e.g. ffffff, ff0000 etc. as well as RGB triplets as before.

• Single program for any number of users for any number of web pages.

• Any color of the counter image can be made transparent at run time.

• Style of digits can be specified at run time.

• Maximum number of digits can be set or counter can be displayed with exact number of digits at run time.

• User will be able to specify a start-up counter value at run time. This will take effect if the data file does not exist.

• If you do not want to display the counter but like to keep the hits on your page, sh=0 can be defined in the QUERY_STRING at run time. It will write a 1x1 transparent GIF image to the browser but the counter in the data file will be incremented all right.

Digit Styles

The digits used in this program are individual GIF files. This gives flexibility of using digits of your choice. The digit images are named as zero.gif, one.gif,.... nine.gif. At run-time, simply the directory of the images is specified to use a different style. Therefore, a single program can generate digits of various styles. Here are the supplied digit styles.

Style A		designed by me (msequor)(digits/A) can be used for clock or date.
Style B		Borrowed from HTML-access counter. (digits/B)
Style C		designed by benjamin@pop3.oro.net (digits/C)
Style D		designed by me (digits/D) can be used for clock or date.
Style E		designed by me (digits/E) can be used for clock or date.

A suggested use of style E is to make the white color transparent (you will know about transparency later).

For a huge collection of GIF digits, check out the Digit Mania page.

This program will work with any digits from the Digit Mania page. To use those digits, create subdirectories say, F,G, H etc. inside the digits directory and rename the images to zero.gif, one.gif..nine.gif. To use those digits for clock or time, make sure you have or create am.gif, pm.gif, colon.gif and dash.gif.

How to call the program?

You can refer to the program from web page like this:

<img src="/cgi-bin/Count.cgi?df=login_sample.dat" align=absmiddle>

The string between ? and " is called the QUERY_STRING. Make sure there is no newlines in the <img src= line and no space in the QUERY_STRING. Here in, df=sample.dat, df means datafile and sample.dat is the counter datafile. The counter stores the hits in this file. This datafile is suppiled. If the data file does not exist, it will be created.

The counter program has lots of options, you can make it work and look the way you desire. In the query string, you can use the options described in the table below. The options can be separated by a | or a &. You can use either one or both. Here is an example:

<img src="/cgi-bin/Count.cgi?ft=T&frgb=gold|df=sample.dat" align=absmiddle>

The options can be in any order and not case sensitive.

Counter Options

[I stole it from Kevin's page :) ]

Parameter	Name	Description	Default
display=X	Specifies what to display.	A valid string can be specified with display= parameter to display counter, clock or date. The valid value for the string parameter X is counter,clock or date For counter, this parameter is not need as counter is the default display type. Note: clock and date will only work with digit style A, D and E. If you want to use a different style of digits, you have to design the dash.gif, am.gif, pm.gif and colon.gif.	display=counter
timezone=X	Specifies timezone.	The parameter timezone= is only significant with display=clock or display=date. Use this parameter if you want to display time or date of another timezone. For example, for eastern time with daylight saving time, timezone=EST5EDT, central time with daylight saving time, timezone=CST6CDT, mountain time with daylight saving time, timezone=MST7MDT, pacific time with daylight saving time, timezone=PST8PDT. for GMT, timezone=GMT. An offset from GMT can be used as well, timezone=GMT+6. Note, the GMT offset method may not work properly with SYSV type OS. Look at the manpage for ctime, localtime for your machine. If the clock displays your local time wrong, you must specify your timezone with that parameter in order to display the correct time.	None.
dformat=X	Specifies date format.	This parameter is only significant with display=date. The valid value for the string parameter X is any combination of MMDDYY (Month-Day-Year). For example, dformat=ddmmyy, dformat=YYMMDD.	dformat=MMDDYY
ft=X	Frame Thickness	You can wrap the counter in an ornamental frame of X pixels thick. Use 0 for no frame. Values over 5 make a nice 3-D effect.	ft=6
frgb=R;G;B	Frame Color	Specifies the color of the frame in RGB (red/green/blue) format. Each color component, R, G, and B is specified as a value between 0 and 255. If you use ft= without a frgb= param, the default color is used. If you specify a frgb= without a ft=, then the frame thickness defaults to 5. All the examples show ft=5. The color can be specified as hex string or a name. Do not use a # before the hex string as Netscape. For example, if you want to specify white in hex, you do frgb=ffffff. Look at the color name mapping database for some hints.	frgb=100;139;216 or frgb=648bd8
tr=B	Transparency On/Off	You can specify if your counter image will have a transparent color with the Boolean B. So tr=Y means there will be a transparent color; and tr=N means there will not. It does not matter if the GIF files used for the digits are "transparent"; you must specify explicitly which color to make transparent. If you specify a trgb=, then you do not need to specify tr=Y. Valid values for B are Y, N, T, F, 1, or 0.	tr=N No Transparency
md=X	Max Digits	Defines maximum number of digits to display. Any value between 5 and 10 inclusive are permitted. Padding with leading zeros is automatically done for you; longer counts are truncated to the given X.	md=6 Without padding
pad=B	Padding with 0's	Turn padding on/off in conjunction with md= setting. Valid values for the Boolean parameter B are Y, N, T, F, 1, or 0.	pad=N Without specification of a md=value pad=Y With specification of a md=value
dd=A	Digit Directory	Denotes directory of a specific styles of digits. Four styles of digits are suppiled. They are kept at the directories A,B,C and D respectively. Visit the digit mania page for other styles of digits.	dd=A My green led digits
st=X	Start Count	Used to set the initial value of the counter to some number X. This is only valid if you decided to allow automatic datafile creation. This is a bad practice to compile with this option, however it makes site maintaining easier. Note that this parameter has no effect if the datafile alreay exist. If you want to change the counter value in a existing datafile, hand edit the file. The minimum value for st is 1.	st=1 Count starts at 1
sh=B	Show digits	Used to turn display of digits on or off according to the Boolean B. When sh=T, counter will be displayed and incremented, this is the default behavior. If sh=F no digits will show, but the counter will still increment; instead of digits a transparent 1x1 GIF is displayed. Valid values for the Boolean parameter B are Y, N, T, F, 1, or 0	sh=Y
df=data_file	Datafile to store count	Specifies the name of the file for storing the count in. The file must be allocated to you as was mentioned in the "Authorizations" section above. You can use df=random to diaplay a random number. One special use of the parameter is df=RANDOM. This returns a random number using the fractional portion of the host's time of day clock as a seed for the generator. Unlike all other WWWcounter parameters, the file name provided is case-sensitive, except for the value random. Or Random, or rANDOM, etc.	df=random if no datafile is specified
incr=B	Increment Count	Makes it possible to display the current count without incrementing the count. This can be used to examine the count for reporting or other purposes without adding to the count. Valid values for the Boolean parameter B are Y, N, T, F, 1, or 0.	incr=T Increment the counter on each invocation
lit=X	Display literal	Makes it possible to display a given, predetermined value. Valid values for the string X are digits.	None
negate=B	Negate the color	Makes it possible to negate the color of the counter digits. Note that the Frame is exempted from negating. Valid values for the Boolean parameter B are Y, N, T, F, 1, or 0.	negate=F Do not negate
degrees=X	Rotate X degrees	Makes it possible to rotate the counter image X degree. The possible values of X is 90, 180, 270 and 360. Note 360 is meaningless as the counter will come back to the original 0 degree.	degrees=270 With rotate=Y and without degrees=X rotate 270 degreess clockwise
rotate=B	Rotate On/Off	The Boolean value B turns on or off rotating. If you use degrees= settting, rotate is not needed. Valid values for the Boolean parameter B are Y, N, T, F, 1, or 0.	rotate=F Do not rotate

Error Messages

Count will try to return an image in any event. That is, even if it fails for some reason, it will write the error messages in GIF format. The text error messages also will be written to the counter log file defined with LogFile in the directory defined with LogDir in the config.h file. The program Count-conf asked about these if you remember.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. My CGI scripts don't work. What's wrong?

Copyright

Copyright 1995 by Muhammad A Muquit. Permission to use, copy, modify and sell this program for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that this copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation, and the author's name not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software without specific written prior permision. If the program is included in a book, publication or software distribution media for sale, the author must be notified about it.

THIS PROGRAM IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY. THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE, INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS, IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR Muhammad A. Muquit BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE. .

Note: This program is developed in my own time. My employer SEMCOR, Inc. has nothing to do with it.

Acknowledgment

Thanks to John Cristy for ImageMagick. I took many routines from ImageMagick for the GIF image combining library. I borrowed the font array and some code from gd library. Thanks to Tom Boutell. Thanks to Kevin J. Walsh. Without Kevin this release would not happen. Thanks to all of you who showed interest in the counter program. I had fun writing it.

Authors

Muhammad A Muquit and
Kevin J. Walsh

I receive enormous number of mails. Please understand that no way I can answer all of the mails I receive, although eventually I read all the mails. If you do not hear from me in 3 days, please resend the mail again.

    Muhammad A Muquit
    SEMCOR, Inc.
    65 West Street Road
    Warminster, PA 18974
    USA

Thanks.

Enjoy!

Last Update: January 18, 1996