Joomla: count Robots

little hack to count robots    (type: Core Hack / Joomla)

 

ever wanted to know how many real (guest) users are just visting your site?

 

counting the number of robots is quite simple if you add just a line in the library MetadataManager.php  

(this is where the basic data for a new session are set. you find it in libraries/src/Session)

 

in the function createRecordIfNonExisting

just look for the line  $values = array(...) and right before add this 2 lines

if ($user->guest && $this->app->client->robot)   // the joomla core returns true if a robot is detected
$user->guest ++;                                                     // and then we simply set $user->guest = 2 (normally 1)

                                                                                    * app->client->robot is only available in Jooma 3.7 or newer

now the database entry in the guest column will not be only 0 or 1, but may be  2 if a robot is detected

 

you can do what you want or your counting modules looks for,

eg. in the whoisonline module guest and members are just count by the db->session data

so if data->guest == 0 counts as a member, and data->guest  == 1 counts as a guest

you decide if counting all non-members (data->guest > 0) , or count robots extra (data-guest == 2)

 

the footer shows an example and also look at the HotorNot Statistic, where just real guests are count