is there anyway to capture visitors' browsing history?

[wvdba]

hi,
i'm working on a web page that client has asked to display data from a database based on visitor's browsing history and/or habits, sort of like ebay when they display other items like the ones a user has visited or has on a watch list. is there anyway to accomplish this? is there anyway to find visitor's browse history?
thanks.

 

[feherke]

Hi

That would be a rude privacy violation and fortunately is not possible.

Keep a log of your users' activity on server-side and extract such statistical information from that log. ( Not necessary a log file. Preferably a database table. )

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[wvdba]

i understand your concern, feherke. but, ebay uses this method to display items of interest to user. for example, if you have visited guitar items, it displays many listings of guitars the next time you log on. is that related to this method?
thanks.

 

[feherke]

Hi

Certainly they are not using JavaScript, or any other client-side technology, to do that.

As I wrote : log the users' activity and query the log. All on server-side.


Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[Geates]

What feherke said still applies. When you visit ebay, their servers are collecting data based soley on what items your are searching for WHILE AT EBAY. Aside from being completely unethical, there is currently no way for them to gather non-ebay activity. Keep in mind, ebay's website is server-side; it cannot access client-side resources (outside of browser components).

-Geates

 

[iggitme]

just a thought.. i've done this before... write a cookie saving most recent 'items' or whatever specifics your site offers... then call the cookie, read it and display the 'most recent' history

 

[feherke]

Hi

Yes, that could be used as cheap alternative. It is suitable for sites without registration, like

http://perldoc.perl.org/

. But having registered members and using cookie-based JavaScript solution for this, gives an amateurish feeling to the site.


Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[iggitme]

I wish I could agree with you but I can't. You can save history in a temp file, by a code number assigned to the visitor and housed in a cookie. If you don't do that, you can't trust tracking the numbers, they change too often and every proxy access will be useless to track. Cookies are behind the scenes, so nobody would know you were doing that unless they didn't have cookies 'on' and didn't therefore have a history to follow.

 

[feherke]

Hi

write a cookie saving most recent 'items' or whatever specifics your site offers

You can save history in a temp file, by a code number assigned to the visitor and housed in a cookie.

Sorry if I misunderstood you, but those two sentences have different meaning for me.

Regarding your second suggestion, I agree, as it is quite the same as I suggested. ( Or at least I tried to, if I not explained myself clearly... )


Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/