Feature request: allow to count files download

[Lucas-C]

Hi.

Your project seems really nice, with clear documentation & clean code (plus I like Python very much !)

I have a need for a self-hosted web app that would allow me to count file downloads for specific files (PDFs & ZIPs).

I the past I used a public instance of dolomon, but it is now closing and I would like to use a more well maintained software, ideally not written in Perl nor PHP.

I searched around on the web, but I could not find any solution that met those requirements.
So maybe that could also be another nice feature of your hit-counter project?

Technically, it could probably be done in Javascript using the current version of hit-counter,
but it isn't documented and I have had bad experiences of messing with download links:
depending on browsers, timing & many other factors sometimes the "hit" may not be properly counted due to the page switch,
or worse, the file download may fail for the user.

Hence I was thinking more about a system like dolomon used, where you "register" a link with hit-counter,
and the app provides a "download link" that acts as a 302 redirect.
This would probably require a DB schema change though.

What do you think about all this ?

[brentvollebregt]

I understand what you are looking for here, but can you not accomplish the same result using a slink shortening service that also offers analytics for shortened links?

[Lucas-C]

Sure, I could probably find another self-hosted solution elsewhere.
I'll keep looking if you are not interested in this feature and decide this is out-of-scope for this project.

[brentvollebregt]

the file download may fail for the user

If a 302 is used, this cannot be tracked