Re: Serial Numbers

On Mon, 2010-07-12 at 14:52 -0400, Gary wrote: > I'm sure it is possible, but I am unsure how to do this. I have created a > Sale coupon that I was going to put up on a site that I manage, for visitors > to print out and bring to the store. The coupon is currently a .png, however > I was planning on converting to a pdf. I would like to put on the coupon a > serial number that increases by 1 everytime the page is viewed. I dont > really care if someone refreshes the page and skews the numbers. > > Is this possible and could someone give me some help? > > Thanks > > Gary > > > > __________ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature database 5273 > (20100712) __________ > > The message was checked by ESET Smart Security. > > http://www.eset.com > > > > > You need some indicator on your server to keep track of the number. To me, the ideal solution would appear to be a MySQL database. You can set up a table with an auto_increment field and use the id generated from that. Two things to maybe note: 1. Don't use MAX(id) in a query to get the next auto value, use something like mysql_insert_id() instead. The MAX() method is just a race condition waiting to happen. 2. If you expect a lot of traffic, then consider setting this table to use the InnoDB engine instead of MyIsam which is usually the default. This allows MySQL to apply row-level locking instead of table-level, which can improve performance when PHP has to wait for MySQL. Thanks, Ash http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk