Unique hit and visitor counter

Hi everybody,
I need a hit counter, which could count unique visitors per page. Now i have this one:

$link_id = $_GET['ico'];
	$sql = "UPDATE `quicklink` SET `views`=views+1 WHERE `id`=" . $link_id;
	$result = mysql_query($sql);

PHP:

The problem with this is it increase the count if you refresh the page even though it's been visited. How can I stopped the count if it's been visited or one ip= 1 view only?

I donnot want to save all visits to my database like:

$ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']; 
$location = $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; 

PHP:

I think saving all them to the database is not a good solution. I just want to count visitor ip for each article. Any help?

 

Check if user's ip is already in the db
Yes
     Do nothing
No
     Add users ip in the db
     Increase the visitor count by 1

Code (markup):

 

You must need store IP, as well as ID of article,

You have to check both, if record not exists then update both tables.

 

get the IP $ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
and create a text file with fwrite ()

then a simple script for
if file_exists($uniqueIP _127.0.00 (users IP) {
do nothing
}
else {

write the IP to a text file of $uniqueIP_ (users IP)


have the program create a folder (make directory) with todays date, that way it can delete the directory /folder the next day and create a new
if directory exists , do nothing, if directory doesn't exist, create it of 09/13/2012

That way you will have only txt files that are named after their IP and on next day if the scripts sees an old folder, it will check database to see if the files had been entered, if not it will enter the IP inside of every file to the database. otherwise it deletes it.

Another way is to write to a file and append new IPs to the file only if the script reads the file and finds no stringmatch.

Either way, you could create an interface to check the text files in a folder or the lines of appended code of IPs to see at a glance through your interface how many unique IP visits that day.