Self-hosted Ruby version of that old 90s chestnut, <BLINK>the web-site hit counter</BLINK>.

1. Install the gem and supporting files.

   Gemfile

     gem 'hit_counter'

   Run:

     bundle
     rake hit_counter:install

2. Add a controller action to your app.

   application_controller.rb

     def hit_counter
       return if params[:url].blank?
   
       # find or create a hit counter for this URL
       hc = HitCounter.get params[:url]
   
       # increase the tally by one
       hc.increment
   
       # get the image as a blob and stream it to the browser
       send_data hc.image(params[:style]).to_blob,
                 disposition: 'inline',
                 filename: "#{hc.hits}.png",
                 type: :png
    end

   routes.rb

    get 'hit-counter' => 'application#hit_counter'
    # technically should be POST/PUT, but GET makes integration simpler

3. Add the hit-counter image tag to your site's HTML:

     <img alt="Hit Counter" border="0" src="/hit-counter?url=https://cnn.com&style=1" />

Or try it out in irb with:

require './spec/spec_helper'
hc = HitCounter.get('cnn.com')

Name	Style number
Celtic
Odometer
Scout

You can use one of the three included styles by specifying a different style param in the HTML:

  <img alt="Hit Counter" border="0" src="/hit-counter?url=cnn.com&style=1" />

1. To add your own style, create a PNG for each of the digits, 0.png through 9.png. Save the images in a folder named after your new style in public/images/digits.

2. In your controller, declare a new STYLES constant and add the folder name to it:

     HitCounter::STYLES = %w(odometer scout celtic folder_name)

3. In your HTML, specify the new style with a style param equal to its index in the array plus one (unlike arrays, the style param's index is one-based):

     <img alt="Hit Counter" border="0" src="/hit-counter?url=cnn.com&style=4" />

Complete RDoc documentation is available at RubyDoc.info.

Copyright © 2011-2025 Roderick Monje. See LICENSE.txt for further details.