Track whos accessing reports

[Neekos]

I have an internal web page for my company that has a list of hyperlinks so that users can access different reports (.xls files on the server). What i would like to do is to keep track of who is accessing each report in a database.

I attempted to use the OnClick property of the <a href> tag to send a SQL query to insert the data into the table, however that wasnt working. Upon further investigation on the web - it appears the OnClick property only handles javascript or vbscripts.

Does anyone have any ideas on how i can go about accomplishing this?

Thank you in advance.

[Neekos]

I forgot to add - the users are hitting a login screen before they get to the reports page, so im gathering their login data through that.

also - the table im trying to populate has the following metadata:

user - varchar(6)
date - timestamp
report_name - varchar(150)

[pbmods]

Heya, Neekos.

The easiest way to do this is to review your server access log.

A slightly more sophisticated method would be to provide access to these files via a PHP script:

/* Verify credentials. */
if( empty($_SESSION['isLoggedIn']) )
{
  goToLoginScreen();
}
 
/* Verify that file exists. */
if( $filePath = getFilePathFromFileID($_GET['fileid']) )
{
  /* Log file access. */
  recordFileAccessToLogFile($_GET['fileid'], $_SESSION['userid']);
 
  /* Send the file to the browser. */
  header('Content-Type: application/force-download');
  header('Content-Disposition: attachment');
  header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($filePath));
 
  readfile($filePath);
}
 

[Neekos]

ok - i understand the verify the login creds and to verify the file exists...thats all in place.

I'm not understanding this line tho:

recordFileAccessToLogFile($_GET['fileid'], $_SESSION['userid']);

what is that doing? and where is the recordFileAccessToLogFile function?

thanks for your reply!

[Neekos]

also - these are hyperlinks they are clicking to view the files. Here is a an example of part of the table:

<TD><a href="Static_Linked_Reports/WCT_HG.xls">WCT Hotel Guides CRD</a></TD>
<TD><?php
$filename = "Static_Linked_Reports/WCT_HG.xls";
echo date ("F d Y H:i", filemtime($filename))
?></TD>

[pbmods]

I used "recordFileAccessToLogFile" as a dummy function name. This would be the function where you record that the User accessed the file.

Going back to your OP, I see that you are recording the access log info in a database, so a better name for the function might be recordFileAccessToDatabase() (or you can just inline the SQL query and not bother with outsourcing it to an external function).

[Neekos]

The part im not understanding is how to call the function (or the SQL update query) when the hyperlink is clicked.

[Markus]

@Neekos
The link would point to a page, say, 'process.php'. Then in process.php, you would do what PBMods said above.