Tracking Recent Downloads

[C# programmer]

Hi All,

I'm working on a project which requires tracking of recent document
downloads. There is a feature in which user can download the docs
without logining into the website for some of the clients. While for
other clients user has to log into the website to download docs.

We used to create dummy/fake accounts(in sql server) for client users
who do not require login and use the created account to track recent
downloads(using cookie to store the dummy/fake account id). But now we
realize that creating dummy/fake account each time when the cookie is
deleted can cause problems like user table will grow big because of
dummy/fake accounts.

Any suggestions on this?

Thanks.

 

[Mark Fitzpatrick]

What kind of tracking are you looking for? One of the simplest tracking
mechanisms is instead of linking directly to a file, you link to an
intermediate file and pass the URL of the download file as a parameter. This
intermediate file, which we'll call download.aspx for now, can then save any
info about the user available into a database then redirect the user to the
url of the download item that was passed in as a parameter. This was you can
grab their IP address, browser type, etc..

 

[C# programmer]

Thanks for the response Mark.

The tracking should be similar to the "Recently visited groups" in
google groups. If you log into groups.google.com you will have the list
of groups you visited recently. But if you log out then you will have
different list of groups which you visited while you were not logged
in.

Now when the user is not logged in, how can we identify the user to
keep track of the recently visited groups.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks.