WWW Homepage Access Counter and Clock!

Three-in-one (Counter+Clock+Date)

[Count Release 2.2]

This document was written by Muhammad A Muquit.

The original docuement is here.

THIS IS A EXCERPT !! OF THE ORIGINAL DOCUMENT

If you see the counter, clock or date image as 888888, then you are using a browser which can not be trusted. For untrusted browsers, no counter hit is recorded, no time or date is displayed and the literal digit string is displayed. This feature guarantees that the counter can not be accessed remotely to mess up the datafile from a browser like yours. I consider a browser untrusted if it does not return the environment variable HTTP_REFERER. Some entries in the log file are made including the browser type.

What's new

Please check this section periodically to see what have been changed or added. If you already installed Count 2.2 and the changes are not in your version, you just need to compile the program and copy the Count.cgi to the cgi-bin directory. You do not need to re-install the whole package, but you can do that if you insist.

Table of Contents

• Requirements
• Introduction
• Features
• Digit styles
• How to call the program from web page?
• Examples
• Error messages
• Copyright
• Acknowledgment
• Authors
• I like to hear from you
• ChangeLog (if you contributed, your name is there)

Requirements

• Unix Operating System.

  This version (2.2) is not ported to any OS yet. For NT and OS2 port, please visit the web page for Count 1.5.

• A C compiler (ANSI or non-ANSI).

• You must have root access and basic concept of Unix system administration (to install). If your site is configured to run CGI program from users' space, then you will not need root access.

• You must run a httpd daemon (tested with NCSA,CERN and APACHE httpd). It also works with Netscape Communications Server (reported by Scott Barnhill (cosbarnh@ihc.com). However it should work with any unix http server which supports CGI programs. I personally run APACHE httpd 1.0. I think it's the best freely available http server for Unix.

  This program is compiled and tested on a Sparc 10 (SunOS 4.1.4) running NCSA httpd 1.4 , CERN httpd 3.0, APACHE httpd 1.0, (gcc 2.6.3).

  Count 1.5 runs on:

      [Linux] | [Solaris 2.x] | [BSDI] | [SGI IRIX 5.3] 
      [AIX 3.2.5] | [HP-UX-?] | [Ultrix 4.3] | [SCO]
      [AT&T Unix SVR4] | [DEC Alpha 3000/300L with OSF/1]
  

  This version should be portable as well.

Introduction

This is a CGI program to keep record of the raw hits of a web page. It generates a GIF image of the number of hits and returns to the browser as an in-lined image. The program also has run-time option not to show the digit images, this way the hits can be kept without displaying it. The hits can be be monitored without incrementing from a separate page as well. Almost all of the features are run-time options. The hits are no way accurate. Someone can reload the page again and again to increase the hits. However, people like to see how many times someone visited their page. The same program can be used to count hits for any number of web pages for any number of users. The program can be used to display time or date as well. The time or date of any place in the word can be displayed by specifying a timezone string for that location. The date can be formatted in any combination of MMDDYY (Month-Day-Year). This program started as a fun to play with CGI programming but due to enormous interest, and feature request, it has turned in to the most configurable counter on the web.

The program is distributed as a gzip'd tar archive. If you do not have gzip/gunzip, it's available at: prep.ai.mit.edu.

Features

• Does not require server-side includes.

• Count 2.0 is backward compatible with Count1.5's URL. One thing to note, the keyword wxh has no meaning in Count 2.0. It was used in Count 1.5 to specify digit dimensions. In Count 2.0 it is not required, because the digit dimensions are determined automatically. Therefore, you can use variable width digit images in this version.

• Reasonable default for all QUERY_DTRING parameters.

• The same program can be used to display time or date.

• The time and date of any place in the world can be displayed.

• Supports digit images with variable width.

• Counter can be displayed without incrementing (for monitoring etc.)

• A literal digit string can be displayed.

• A random digit string can be displayed.

• The color of the digits can be negated.

• The counter can be rotated (only integral of 90 degrees, 90,180,270). The default rotation is 270 degrees.

• An ornamental 3D frame can be wrapped around the counter image with user defined thickness and color at run time.

• The frame and transparent color can be a name (e.g. red,green,pink etc.). The color can be specified as a hex string, e.g. ffffff, ff0000 etc. as well as RGB triplets as before.

• Single program for any number of users for any number of web pages.

• Any color of the counter image can be made transparent at run time.

• Style of digits can be specified at run time.

• Authorized host names can be in the configuration file. To handle "Counter Terrorism", (looks like this page is dead!) the source code modification is not necessary.

• IP filtering through a configuration file at run time. Any number of hosts can be ignored from counting. Wildcard can be used for IP address in the configuration file to ignore hosts from counting. For example, to ignore host in a Class C network, host name can be 192.160.166.*, for Class B network, 128.66.*.*, for Class A network, 26.*.*.*. Therefore all hosts in a domain can be filtered out this way. It's a good idea to ignore your own host or entire domain. Gen-conf program will let you create the configuration fiel interactively.

• Advisory data file locking. Data file will not get messed up by simultaneous Count.cgi processes. Advisory data file locking is superior to ancillary file locking because advisory locking is handled directly by the Operating System.

• Maximum number of digits can be set or counter can be displayed with exact number of digits at run time.

• User will be able to specify a start-up counter value at run time. This will take effect if the data file does not exist. You will be problem by the configuration program if you want this feature or not.

• If you do not want to display the counter but like to keep the hits on your page, sh=0 can be defined in the QUERY_STRING at run time. It will write a 1x1 transparent GIF image to the browser but the counter in the data file will be incremented all right.

Digit Styles

The digits used in this program are individual GIF files. This gives flexibility of using digits of your choice. The digit images are named as zero.gif, one.gif,.... nine.gif. At run-time, simply the directory of the images is specified to use a different style. Therefore, a single program can generate digits of various styles. Here are the supplied digit styles.

Style A		designed by me (digits/A) can be used for clock or date.
Style B		Borrowed from HTML-access counter. (digits/B)
Style C		designed by benjamin@pop3.oro.net (digits/C)
Style D		designed by me (digits/D) can be used for clock or date.
Style E		designed by me (digits/E) can be used for clock or date.

A suggested use of style E is to make the white color transparent (you will know about transparency later).

For a huge collection of GIF digits, check out the Digit Mania page.

This program will work with any digits from the Digit Mania page. To use those digits, create subdirectories say, F,G, H etc. inside the digits directory and rename the images to zero.gif, one.gif..nine.gif. To use those digits for clock or time, make sure you have or create am.gif, pm.gif, colon.gif and dash.gif.

The options can be in any order and not case sensitive.

Anyway, look at this Example Page you will get the picture.

Parameter	Name	Description	Default
display=X	Specifies what to display.	A valid string can be specified with display= parameter to display counter, clock or date. The valid value for the string parameter X is counter,clock or date For counter, this parameter is not need as counter is the default display type. Note: clock and date will only work with digit style A, D and E. If you want to use a different style of digits, you have to design the dash.gif, am.gif, pm.gif and colon.gif.	display=counter
timezone=X	Specifies timezone.	The parameter timezone= is only significant with display=clock or display=date. Use this parameter if you want to display time or date of another timezone. For example, for eastern time with daylight saving time, timezone=EST5EDT, central time with daylight saving time, timezone=CST6CDT, mountain time with daylight saving time, timezone=MST7MDT, pacific time with daylight saving time, timezone=PST8PDT. for GMT, timezone=GMT. An offset from GMT can be used as well, timezone=GMT+6. Note, the GMT offset method may not work properly with SYSV type OS. Look at the manpage for ctime, localtime for your machine. If the clock displays your local time wrong, you must specify your timezone with that parameter in order to display the correct time.	None.
dformat=X	Specifies date format.	This parameter is only significant with display=date. The valid value for the string parameter X is any combination of MMDDYY (Month-Day-Year). For example, dformat=ddmmyy, dformat=YYMMDD.	dformat=MMDDYY
ft=X	Frame Thickness	You can wrap the counter in an ornamental frame of X pixels thick. Use 0 for no frame. Values over 5 make a nice 3-D effect.	ft=6
frgb=R;G;B	Frame Color	Specifies the color of the frame in RGB (red/green/blue) format. Each color component, R, G, and B is specified as a value between 0 and 255. If you use ft= without a frgb= param, the default color is used. If you specify a frgb= without a ft=, then the frame thickness defaults to 5. All the examples show ft=5. The color can be specified as hex string or a name. Do not use a # before the hex string as Netscape. For example, if you want to specify white in hex, you do frgb=ffffff. Look at the color name mapping database for some hints.	frgb=100;139;216 or frgb=648bd8
tr=B	Transparency On/Off	You can specify if your counter image will have a transparent color with the Boolean B. So tr=Y means there will be a transparent color; and tr=N means there will not. It does not matter if the GIF files used for the digits are "transparent"; you must specify explicitly which color to make transparent. If you specify a trgb=, then you do not need to specify tr=Y. Valid values for B are Y, N, T, F, 1, or 0.	tr=N No Transparency
md=X	Max Digits	Defines maximum number of digits to display. Any value between 5 and 10 inclusive are permitted. Padding with leading zeros is automatically done for you; longer counts are truncated to the given X.	md=6 Without padding
pad=B	Padding with 0's	Turn padding on/off in conjunction with md= setting. Valid values for the Boolean parameter B are Y, N, T, F, 1, or 0.	pad=N Without specification of a md=value pad=Y With specification of a md=value
dd=A	Digit Directory	Denotes directory of a specific styles of digits. Four styles of digits are suppiled. They are kept at the directories A,B,C and D respectively. Visit the digit mania page for other styles of digits.	dd=A My green led digits
st=X	Start Count	Used to set the initial value of the counter to some number X. This is only valid if you decided to allow automatic datafile creation. This is a bad practice to compile with this option, however it makes site maintaining easier. Note that this parameter has no effect if the datafile alreay exist. If you want to change the counter value in a existing datafile, hand edit the file. The minimum value for st is 1.	st=1 Count starts at 1
sh=B	Show digits	Used to turn display of digits on or off according to the Boolean B. When sh=T, counter will be displayed and incremented, this is the default behavior. If sh=F no digits will show, but the counter will still increment; instead of digits a transparent 1x1 GIF is displayed. Valid values for the Boolean parameter B are Y, N, T, F, 1, or 0	sh=Y
df=data_file	Datafile to store count	Specifies the name of the file for storing the count in. The file must be allocated to you as was mentioned in the "Authorizations" section above. You can use df=random to diaplay a random number. One special use of the parameter is df=RANDOM. This returns a random number using the fractional portion of the host's time of day clock as a seed for the generator. Unlike all other WWWcounter parameters, the file name provided is case-sensitive, except for the value random. Or Random, or rANDOM, etc.	df=random if no datafile is specified
incr=B	Increment Count	Makes it possible to display the current count without incrementing the count. This can be used to examine the count for reporting or other purposes without adding to the count. Valid values for the Boolean parameter B are Y, N, T, F, 1, or 0.	incr=T Increment the counter on each invocation
lit=X	Display literal	Makes it possible to display a given, predetermined value. Valid values for the string X are digits.	None
negate=B	Negate the color	Makes it possible to negate the color of the counter digits. Note that the Frame is exempted from negating. Valid values for the Boolean parameter B are Y, N, T, F, 1, or 0.	negate=F Do not negate
degrees=X	Rotate X degrees	Makes it possible to rotate the counter image X degree. The possible values of X is 90, 180, 270 and 360. Note 360 is meaningless as the counter will come back to the original 0 degree.	degrees=270 With rotate=Y and without degrees=X rotate 270 degreess clockwise
rotate=B	Rotate On/Off	The Boolean value B turns on or off rotating. If you use degrees= settting, rotate is not needed. Valid values for the Boolean parameter B are Y, N, T, F, 1, or 0.	rotate=F Do not rotate

What is "Counter Terrorism"? And how this program handles it?

If you do not know, in most cases any CGI program can be referred remotely. For example, a CGI program x.cgi (say it returns an in-lined image) in foo.com can be called from foobar.com as follows:

    <img src="http://foo.com/cgi-bin/x.cgi">

That is, someone somewhere on the Internet can refer to your counter and increase the hits and you will not have a clue. You will get the false impression of many people visiting your page. You can look at the so called "Counter Terrorist" (looks like this page is dead!) page for demo.

So how this program handles this? The counter program tries to get a environment variable called HTTP_REFERER for remote referer. It is necessary to check this variable because when someone remotely refer to a CGI program to your machine, the variable REMOTE_ADDR will be the address of your machine. So checking REMOTE_ADDR will not work. Most of the moderm browsers returns the env variable HTTP_REFERER. If the browser does not return the variable, counter will be served anyway. But you are not lost totally here. If you decided to ignore count for your host running httpd, the counter will be served but it will not be increased. So, I suggest ignore count for your own host. Gen-conf program is used for generating the configuration file. The second block is the authentication block, that is hostname in this block will be able to access the counter remotely as mentioned about.

Note this is a simple solution of a complex problem. It is not full proof. Your feedback is always welcome in this regard.

Error Messages

Count will try to return an image in any event. That is, even if it fails for some reason, it will write the error messages in GIF format. The text error messages also will be written to the counter log file defined with LogFile in the directory defined with LogDir in the config.h file. The program Count-conf asked about these if you remember.

If you see any of these images, please check the Counter log file you defined with LogDir and LogFile. If the program could not create the log file, it will write the error messages to stderr. In that case if you configured your httpd server to write the log to a file, the error messages will the written to this file.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. My CGI scripts don't work. What's wrong?

Copyright

Copyright 1995 by Muhammad A Muquit. Permission to use, copy, modify and sell this program for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that this copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation, and the author's name not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software without specific written prior permision. If the program is included in a book, publication or software distribution media for sale, the author must be notified about it.

THIS PROGRAM IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY. THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE, INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS, IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR Muhammad A. Muquit BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE. .

Note: This program is developed in my own time. My employer SEMCOR, Inc. has nothing to do with it.

Acknowledgment

Thanks to John Cristy for ImageMagick. I took many routines from ImageMagick for the GIF image combining library. I borrowed the font array and some code from gd library. Thanks to Tom Boutell. Thanks to Kevin J. Walsh. Without Kevin this release would not happen. Thanks to all of you who showed interest in the counter program. I had fun writing it.

Authors

Muhammad A Muquit and
Kevin J. Walsh

I like to hear from you

If you are using this program, I like to hear from you. Please add your web page URL to the database via this form. You can drop me a line if you like. If you are having any problem with the program, please let me know as well. Feel free to send any suggestion. If you think that the program is cool, please consider sending me a picture postcard of the area where you live. Thanks to all of you who sent me the nice postcards. I really appreciate it.

I receive enormous number of mails. Please understand that no way I can answer all of the mails I receive, although eventually I read all the mails. If you do not hear from me in 3 days, please resend the mail again.

    Muhammad A Muquit
    SEMCOR, Inc.
    65 West Street Road
    Warminster, PA 18974
    USA

Thanks.

Enjoy!

ChangeLog

If you contributed or suggested something and if your name is not here, please drop me a line and get the credit.

Count 2.2 (January 16, 1996)

• There was a logic problem in determining AM and PM. Thanks to (stephen@txdirect.net). 01/18/96

• Strict mode (detect if browser returns HTTP_REFERER) is a configurable option.

• An error was in the code related to ACCESS_AUTH directive. Reported by c2dhanle@CompApp.DCU.IE

Count 2.1 (January 15, 1996)

• The bug related to st parameter is fixed.

• The same program an be used to display time or date.

Count 2.0 (December 27, 1995)

• Configuration scripts. You should not to need to hand edit any file in order to compile and install the counter.

• Reasonable defaults for all QUERY_STRING parameters.
  Implemented by Kevin J. Walsh

• QUERY_STRING parameters can be in any order and not case sensitive.
  Implemented by Kevin J. Walsh

• Counter can be displayed without incrementing.
  Implemented by Kevin J. Walsh

• A literal digit string can be displayed.
  Implemented by Kevin J. Walsh

• A random digit string can be displayed as counter.
  Implemented by Kevin J. Walsh

• Colors can be negated, that is counter can be displayed as a negative copy.

• The counter can be rotated (integral of 90 degrees, 90,180,270 degrees).

• No need to specify width and height of digit images.

• The frame and transparent color can be a name (e.g. red, violet etc), a hex string (e.g. ffffff, ff00ff, dddddd etc.) as well as RGB triplets (e.g. 160;255;0, 0;0;0 etc) as before.
  Implemented by Kevin J. Walsh

• The counter can be called as simply as:

      <img src="/cgi-bin/Count.cgi?df=count.dat">
  

  or as complex as before. or any attribute can be set independently.

Count 2.0b

• in IRIX 5.3 11091810 IP12 mips, if you get an error like

          : libCombine.a
      : - Too many arguments
      *** Error code 1 (bu21)
      *** Error code 1 (bu21)
  

  in combine/Makefile, remove the line

  $(RANLIB) $@

  (Thanks to savarro@CENTRCN.UMontreal.CA).
  (12/07/95).

• Log directory was not created by the Count-install script. (Thanks to robertg@zoom.com). (12/07/95).

Thanks to John Anthony Ruchak for beta testing Count 1.5.

Count 1.5 (September 11, 1995, 9:00 PM EDT)

• can be compiled with -DALLOW_FILE_CREATION option. if compiled with this option, the data file will be created if it does not exist in the directory defined with DataDir and the value defined with st in QUERY_STRING will be written to it. (suggested by John Anthony Ruchak.

  (September 10, 1995)

• Advisory data file locking. Datafile will not get messed up by simultaneous Count.cgi processes.

• Error messages are converted directly from string to image. No included GIF images are needed, will be beneficial for system with low memory. I borrowed the font array and some code from gd library. Thanks to Tom Boutell

• Authorized host names can be in configuration file. To handle "Counter Terrorism", the source code modification is not necessary.

• The hits on the web page can be counted without displaying the digits. suggested by Andres Sepulveda.

Count 1.4 (August 27, 1995)

• wigingto@umr.edu suggested to use HTTP_REFERER for checking remote access to the counter.

• randerso@bite.db.uth.tmc.edu sent some code segment to account for port numbers at the end of a referer URL.

• Ornamental frame with user defined color and thickness on the fly.

• maximum number of digits can be >= 5 or <= 10 (if you use md) (on the fly).

• if pad=0, the exact number of digits will be displayed without left padding with zeros (on the fly).

• Any color of the digits can be made transparent on the fly.

• Digit style can be provied on the fly.

• sdw@iadfw.net suggested to keep configuration file, data file, digits, log file in separate directories. It will fix a security hole.

• datafile can be edited.

Count 1.3

• Hardcoded the base directory of the counter data files. This will fix a security hole. Thanks to carsten@group.com

Last Update: January 18, 1996

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