Drupal track file downloads

I'm happy to explore modules, my initial thought was that the google analytics module might take care of that on its own, but I realized it still relies on someone clicking a link. An API for tracking file downloads. Basically the difference between this and other file download tracking modules is this module does not intend to track every single time the file is viewed.

It only wants to track when a file is actually triggered for download. It is up to the site to implement links to the file download URL. This module uses AJAX to count file downloads. It's optimized for medium to large sites such as my own site, OpenGameArt. Using this module has some advantages and some limitations versus other methods of counting downloads:.

Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. How can I track download statistics for private files? Ask Question. Asked 5 years, 9 months ago. Active 4 years, 8 months ago. Viewed 2k times. Improve this question.

UltraBob UltraBob 1, 8 8 silver badges 29 29 bronze badges. Question's title and body doesn't quite match. Title is primarily opinion based each have his own definition of "good" , and in body you didn't say what have you tried so far and what's your exact problem. The files have to exist in the database in order for drupal to know anything about their permissions. I really want to have sub-directories for these files, which means I really don't want to use drupal's file upload system.

Yeah, I found that. Thanks, though. As far as I can tell, you get one level of hierarchy -- main and private, but you still don't get the ability to have a structure to your uploads. Hi, I arrived after reading some of your comments on Drupal. Very usefull information, thank you! Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Some parts of Drupal are not always easy to understand, your ebook helps a lot.

Assuming that one restricts nodes with uploaded files to authenticated users and also denies anonymous users the ability to view uploaded files, are search engines and bots still able to or likely to find and index any of the uploaded files? In other words will this strategy keep them safe from being indexed or does one still need to set the download method to private? Very likely, yes. As they will be in a web-accessible folder.

The file robots. One needs to put his downloadable files in a folder that is not web-accessible, and because of that one needs to use the private method. I have a quick question - on page 9 you recommend typing.. Now that seems to do the following. But if I want to go "three" steps above - since my drupal installation is within drupal directory which eats away a step - what should I put? I think the second one does the trick but is that the right way to go? I have absolutely zero intuition with file paths and would desperately try to avoid having to fix paths once I have many files online :D.

File downloads sure are tricky with Drupal when it comes to multi-layer memberships roles. Thanks so much for preparing these pdfs for everyone. It must have taken a lot of dedication and effort.

I'm trying to develop a drupal page that is able to manage files and control access. I was hoping that maybe I could get access to your pdf tutorial? I would greatly appreciate it. Hi, I'd like to download this pdf and learn about files as I am having some issues that I think will help. I found your site while looking for a Drupal 6 random image module or code. Even the little teaser snippet was enough to show me how to do it myself but I still wanted to register and see what else was on offer :.

The following code works — and it was the source of my confusion. It is taken from the inspire module, who has been created and tested by me.

The module inspire is used on this very site, and it works top notch. Now, the question is, why does it work? Of course the filename key works fine in your code but not in mine, Doh! Now I'll have to rewrite my code to be even more like yours. The tutorial is wrong.

I have exported the PDF file and will now update the attachment But yeah, in the code, it useful sometimes to just use the full path to the file. And the full path to the files I am sorry. I edited my earlier reply.

Quickly, but you were quicker than me. Probably because you got an email notification of my reply. Now we've sorted that out I think I'll change my code back to grabbing and using the object rather than calling basename on the filename;.

That document has been downloaded times, and no one had reported this error to me yet. Most people are not very 'community-aware' for sure. Hi Caroline, Thanks heaps for the great document, it was a major help! I also got a question regarding the display of uploaded images, I hope that's ok.

I'm currently developing custom modules and I use the private download method to restrict access to uploaded files to authenticated users only. However, the custom node only shows placeholders for the images, not the actual images. Am I missing something? Directory permissions of the File System Path are set to Thus, the Drupal db does officially not know about these files, but I assumed that that shouldn't matter, right? Works perfectly fine now, all images displayed!

Thanks again for the doc! I am sorry I came in late to see your question. I am glad you figured it out. Something addressing the technique of embedding inline thumbnails with a mouse-over or one-click display of a pop-up full-size version, and how to protect both thumbnail and full sized image would be useful. If you know of specific references to info on stuff like this, it'd enhance your PDF if you had maybe a references bit at the end.

You recommend placing the files subdirectory outside the "document root" in Apache-speak so that there's no way to submit a URL directly accessing the files, even if you could guess the name and file path.

That's pretty secure. So, while not quite as good as what you recommend as the only good way to do it, I used the technique used by MediaWiki's image-protection mechanism. Barring mistakes or someone with access to your Linux account it's going to be pretty hard for a browser to get access. I can see the link to the ebook pdf in your article, and I am logged into the site, but the link is not clickable, so I can't download it Under the non-clickable link, I am seeing the text "One file is attached to this posting.

You need a premium account to download files and view premium content. The change was effective a few weeks ago. I will send further instructions to your email address. I will also modify that misleading text for the benefit of people who registered before the change.

Thank you. Thanks, your ebook was my best guide trough this topic. Was going mad setting this up for a client. OK, so I've used your ebook very nice thank you to make sure users are logged in before downloading content from my teachers' resources sharing site. The problem is, people login and then download everything - rather than just the stuff they need.

This eats bandwidth and thus costs money! Any ideas about restricting the number of downloads a users can make, say within an hour or day. Unless you have any other ideas about tackling the problem. You need to keep a record of who downloaded what, and save that to your Drupal database. There must be a Drupal module that restricts number of downloads per period of time. If you can't find such module , then you'll need to write your own.

I paid via paypal for your book and upon download I got a "something went wrong, we have been informed" page. I am using this service here , and it only works half of the time. Hi there, I have bought your ebook and have used it with Drupal 6. Any pointers getting file download tables, downloads shown in teasers and 'warning - must be logged in to download' messages on Drupal 7?

Drupal 7 has now been out for a while and I wonder if your ebook will be useful here, too, if not, I won't bother checking it out. It would be great to have file downloads in drupal 7 as described above, but I think that all those additional modules are just not yet up to the version Am I right?

Am I wrong? It's a great ebook, especially for those who have a keen interest in Drupal and want to explore it in greater depths. Request new password. Inspire project view all inspire cards about the inspire project.

What you can do create content. Navigation all-time popular content Donations Download counter Recent posts. Most popular stuff Title Hits Theming the register form in Drupal 6 True or false in php Theming the contact form in Drupal 6 File download in Drupal Saturday, 10 May — Caroline Schnapp The attached ebook, Files in Drupal , has been expanded and updated to account for changes in Drupal 6.

We want to send a hit to Google Analytics every time a user clicks on a link that is a downloadable file. We can see the ' send ' command does just this. The usage for this send command is as follows:. The fields that can be specified by the For the Hit type 'event' the So now the gist becomes clear.

For the send command and a hit type event, the following fields will be sent to Google Analytics:. So, we'll need to modify our links to add the ga send command for an event Hit type with the following fields:.

Open up your template. I've also included it above. Then we add the tracking code per Google Analytics analytics. Now clear cache and refresh your page - you'll see that all files now have the tracking code for downloads.

Lastly we have to navigate the maze that is Google Analytics administration. There are probably lots of ways to skin this cat, but here is a quick way to track downloads using your custom send event.