Manual:hitcounter table

MediaWiki database layout

hitcounter table

MediaWiki versions:

1.2 – 1.24

The hitcounter table in MediaWiki is a temporary buffer for storage of page view information. If $wgHitcounterUpdateFreq is set to a value bigger than 1, this table stores the page_id value of every page that was visited. The value of $wgHitcounterUpdateFreq is then fed into a randomizer, which then updates the page_counter fields of the stored pages when the random number is equal to a particular value. This reduces database load; updating the page_counter field with every page hit is a main source for slow queries. After this batch update of the page_counter fields has been done, the hitcounter table is emptied.

This table was introduced in MediaWiki 1.3, and will always be empty if $wgDisableCounters is set to true. Additionally, if $wgHitcounterUpdateFreq is set to 1, the page table is directly updated, and this table is not used.

This table has been removed from the MediaWiki Core to an extension in MediaWiki 1.25 since the page counter feature itself has been removed from Core. See Requests for comment/Removing hit counters from MediaWiki core. This functionality was then provided by the HitCounters extension. If the extension has been in use, data in this table has been moved to another place and the hitcounter table (if still present) has been removed in MediaWiki 1.26.

Fields

hc_id

Contains the page_id of each visited page in the buffer.

Schema summary

MediaWiki versions:

1.2 – 1.24

DESCRIBE hitcounter;

+-------+------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field | Type             | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+-------+------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| hc_id | int(10) unsigned | NO   |     | NULL    |       |
+-------+------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+