Re: Accessing server-side files: A Counter

[hecker@netscape.com (Frank Hecker)]

At 5:03 AM 1/4/96, Lewis Sellers wrote:
>My test project at the moment is something simple and straight forward: A
>graphic page-hit counter. :)  You know what I'm talking about of course.
>
>Anyway, the graphics portion is straight forward enough with GIFs 0-9 and a
>BLANK.GIF.  The problem is storing the page count on the server.  The
>Netscape info is more than a little vague on this and I'm entirely sure it's
>at all possible.  Any one with ideas? I'm looking for a solution not
>involving any server-side CGI, naturely. Or else what's the point of
>JavaScript? -- Could just do it in perl or c/c++. :)

Are you using client-side JavaScript (i.e., JavaScript functions within
<SCRIPT> tags on the HTML page) for this?  Client-side JavaScript is
interpreted on the client (Netscape Navigator) side only, so it offers you
no way to save a server state variable like a page visit counter.

Server-side JavaScript would allow you to keep a server-side variable like
this.  Server-side JavaScript will be supported by the Netscape LiveWire
and LiveWire Pro products, which are add-ons to Netscape's Web server
products (e.g., Commerce Server).  Server-side JavaScript is interpreted on
the server system, and in essence is an alternative to CGI/Perl scripts for
this general type of function.

Frank

--
Frank Hecker          Pre-sales tech support, Netscape field sales group
hecker@netscape.com   http://home.netscape.com/people/hecker/index.html