Can't Get Views Count (entry tracking)

Question

On the page that I display the details of a single Channel entry, I have the following:

{exp:channel:entries
    channel="blogs"
    disable="categories|category_fields|pagination"
    dynamic="no"
    track_views="one"
    url_title="{segment_3}"
}

The URL where this page is displayed looks like this: www.domain.com/blogs/post/hello-world. Because I am not using the second segment to contain the entry id or URL title (I reserve that for the pagination and Low Search hash), I have to set dynamic="no" and url_title="{segment_3}".

The EE documentation says:

Single entry pages are ones that show only a single entry, specified dynamically by the ID number or URL Title in the URL, such as comment or permalink pages.

I have gone to "Tracking Preferences" and all tracking options are enabled. I have also set "Enable Caching?" to "No" for the template file containing my loop.

Does my setup mean I can't track views? Currently, I do not think it is working.

UPDATE 1:

In my page that lists all the blog entries, I create links using {url_title_path='blog/post'}. On my single entry page, I thought I had to set dynamic="no", but it doesn't seem that I need to. The following works:

{exp:channel:entries
    channel="blogs"
    disable="categories|category_fields|pagination"
    track_views="one"
    url_title="{segment_3}"
}

Have I met all the requirements to enable entry tracking? It's still not working for me, though. I am able to make comments work -- doesn't that have similar requirements as entry tracking?

EDIT 2:

Here's my entire template file (which is being embedded in another template):

{exp:low_replace find="\r|\n|\t" replace="" regex="yes"}
    {exp:channel:entries
        channel="blogs"
        disable="categories|category_fields|pagination"
        track_views="one"
        url_title="{segment_3}"
    }
        <h3>{title}</h3>
        <img src="http://placehold.it/640x260/" width="640" height="260" alt=""/>
        <ul class="inline post-details">
            <li>
                <span class="icon-user"></span>By <a href="/profile/#/">{author}</a>
            </li>
            <li>
                <span class="icon-time"></span>{exp:nice_time date="{entry_date}" format="{format.date.international}"}
            </li>
            <li>
                <span class="icon-comment"></span>{comment_total} Comments
            </li>
            <li>
                <span class="icon-eye-open"></span>{view_count_one} Views
            </li>
        </ul>
        {blog}
    {/exp:channel:entries}
    {embed="common/.comments"}
{/exp:low_replace}

Answer 1

Have you tried out relaxed_track_views? You'd add it to /system/expressionengine/config/config.php:

$config['relaxed_track_views'] = 'y';

Based on the comments you have Query Caching on, so in the end it wasn't a template issue at all - but needing to use the config.php option or turn off Query Caching.

Answer 2

Because view tracking has to be unique, if it's not based on a unique dynamic URL then EE doesn't know it's unique, so you could be rendering out multiple entries on the same URL but specifying different segments or even hard-coding url_title and EE won't know which one is the unqiue one for that URL/page.

To answer your question: no you can't use dynamic="no" and expect track_views parameter to save it.

So where does that leave you? Either you have to restructure your URLs so they can be dynamic or cheat:

Use an add-on: http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/external-entries

SQL:

UPDATE exp_channel_titles SET view_count_one = view_count_one + 1 WHERE url_title = "{segment_3}"

Or add PHP to a template (remember to activate PHP on template - set to output):

<?php
    $EE = & get_instance();
    $EE->db->query("UPDATE exp_channel_titles SET view_count_one = view_count_one + 1 WHERE url_title = '".$EE->uri->segment(3)."'");
?>

This shortened version might work (would need to test it):

<?php
    ee()->db->query("UPDATE exp_channel_titles SET view_count_one = view_count_one + 1 WHERE url_title = '".ee()->uri->segment(3)."'");
?>

Or even...:

<?php
    $this->EE->db->query("UPDATE exp_channel_titles SET view_count_one = view_count_one + 1 WHERE url_title = '".$this->EE->uri->segment(3)."'");
?>

Or neater:

<?php
    $this->EE->db->where(url_title, $this->EE->uri->segment(3));
    $this->EE->db->update('channel_titles', view_count_one = view_count_one + 1);
?>

Obviously this would need to be thoroughly tested! You will need EE conditionals around the PHP to prevent false triggering under different circumstances. Then if the conditional is false, the PHP won't get parsed by EE.

Also note, there's a good reason the EE query tags don't support UPDATE and INSERT, so by adding it to your template, not only could there be security issues, but it could also muck up your tables.

Edit: Updated to reflect Yuri's suggestion

Answer 3

Assuming that blogs is your template group, and post is your template, then you don't need to pass the url_title. So your opening Channel Entries tag should look like this:

{exp:channel:entries
    channel="blogs"
    disable="categories|category_fields|pagination"
    track_views="one"
}

Using the URL structure you mention, and this tag, track_views should indeed work.

Are you perhaps using a caching module like CE Cache? That would prevent the views from incrementing.

If you enable the output profiler, you can actually see which MySQL queries are being executed when the page loads - you should see an entry that looks like:

UPDATE exp_channel_titles SET view_count_one = (view_count_one + 1) WHERE url_title = 'hello-world';