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Downloads.mdb

With downloads.mdb you can count the downloads from a website from the logfiles of the webserver.

Introduction

Statistics for websites are difficult. At best you can do intelligent estimates and read out tendencies. It is almost impossible to get absolute numbers from server logfiles.

»But downloads are different. All you have to do is count them. Right?«

You can of course count the clicks onto a download link or a button. But all you get this way are clicks, not downloads. Who can say whether a visitor waited to the end of a larger file or cancelled the download?

»Well, then we will check the logfile, which contains the files downloaded.«

Correct, but what if somebody uses a download manager? Such a program will split the download into smaller pieces, download these simultaneously, if possible, and thus make downloads faster. But each bite gets a separate entry in the server log. Must we turn on our pocket calculators now? Of course not.

Database

Downloads.mdb by blechtrottel.net tackles this very problem. It is an Access database which counts the downloads in a server log. It counts downloads for a certain file per day and ip address. Thus, it can count downloads made with download managers, which download files in smaller pieces, as it relies on the sum total for an ip address rather than single entries.

Version History

• Version 3.1 (December 2018)
  Donwload numbers can be copied to the clipboard.
• Version 3.0 (January 2016)
  Access 2003, logfiles no longer will be renamed to .txt
  Lines in the downloads file can be commented out by putting an apostrophe (') in front
  Results are listed according to the order in downloads file
  Results can be sorted by File Name or Downloads in ascending and descending order (click respective headers)
  Small changes in the interface
• Version 2.4 (February 2015)
  Problem reading the file Downloads was fixed
• Version 2.3 (July 2014)
  The Downloads file is now automatically refreshed at the start in order to apply changes to the list more easily
  Bug fixes regarding reading special characters in the Downloads file
• Version 2.2 (December 2010)
  File Downloads is now linked as UTF-8, so you have all the special characters of Unicode at your disposal
  Smaller size of the database file
• Version 2.1 (January 2010)
  Easier (more user-friendly) start with the database
  Several Access error messages caught
• Version 2.0 (May 2009)
  Your logfile may have different file extensions (txt, csv, tab, asc, tmp)
  Select button opens last folder
  File paths can now be typed into the text fields
  Downloads list (was downloads.txt) can have any name
  All download files are listed (even those with 0 downloads)
  new language Irish (Gaeilge)
  smaller file
  minor bugfixes
• Version 1.1 (January 2007)
  speaks German and English

Limitations

• Should a download stretch over midnight into a new day, it will not be detected correctly, it will be counted as two incomplete downloads on two different days and be dropped from the statistics.
• If a user starts a download e.g. on a laptop in a network (office, WLAN) and continues this download in another network (at home, in another WLAN), this download cannot be detected, because usually the ip address will change as well.
• The same holds true for interrupted downloads on a computer without a constant internet connection. Here too, the pc will get a new ip address when connecting.
• On the other hand it may happen that e.g. in an internet café several persons consecutively start downloading a file on the same computer but do not finish it. The total may count as one or more downloads, for the server logs the computer only, it knows nothing of the persons using it.

Preliminary Remarks

To work with downloads.mdb you need access to your server log. If you are not sure, ask your provider.

Our database works with logfiles in Common Logfile Format (CLF) only and was tested in a German Access only. Should it not work with your CLF logs, please send us about ten lines from your log, so we can adapt it.

Versions prior to 3.0 (Access 2000)
If the file extension of your log is not supported by Access (e.g. .log), downloads.mdb will automatically rename the file to txt, to be able to work with it. If you should not like that, change the extension back once you have done your statistics. Downloads.mdb will not make any changes to the content of your logfiles!

Usage

1. You can test the database with the testtransferlog.txt and testdownloads.txt provided. If you want to work with your own log then create a downloads list, a file with the extension txt in a folder of your choice. In this file add a line for all the downloads you want to count:

   name;from/root/filename;bytes

   So, for www.mywebsite.com/download/ie4.zip include:

   IE4;download/ie4.zip;789270

2. At the moment, the database supports German, English and Irish (Gaeilge). You can select one of them in a dropdown field named Sprache/Language. If you want to translate the database into another language, please send us a word list. The terms used can be found in a table in downloads.mdb called Texte.
3. Click the button Select next to the field Downloads and select the downloads list you created. Now select the logfile for your website by pressing the second button labelled Select and after a short while you should see a result similar to our screenshot. Alternatively, you can type the file paths into the text fields.
4. If a file shows not even 0 downloads then it was not found in the logfile. This either means that nobody has hit the file or may indicate that there is something wrong in the corresponding line in the downloads list (wrong path, typo in the file name etc).
5. The downloads will be sorted according to the downloads list. If you click the headings File or Downloads you can have them listed in alphabetical order or by number of downloads. First click sorts in ascending order, second click in descending. You can go back to the original sort by clicking Original Sort.
6. There is a button for the Clipboard, which will copy the values according to the activated sort order. Thus, the numbers can easily be pasted into e.g. a table for statistical analysis.
7. You will need the Calculate button only if the data in your files has changed while their names have not. Whenever you select another file, the calculation will be toggled automatically.

Download

You can download the database as downloadsmdb.zip. It contains a testdownloads.txt and a testtransfer.txt, too.

Version 2.4, the last to support Access 2000, is still available.

Final Remarks

• Our database has successfully been counting the downloads for our projects for several years now. These projects are all hosted on Apache servers, we could therefore not test it with other servers' logs. Please send feedback.
• The database has not been locked or protected. If you know your way in Access, you can adapt it to your personal needs. Comments are welcome anytime.
• The statistics you can create with downloads.mdb (and similar programs and services) are about as accurate as the circulation figures for a newspaper. No one can say how many readers a newspaper really has, several people may share one copy while some other copies end up in the bin unread. And even if we could count downloads exactly, we still would not know if the files are actually used ...