code is not finding all 'bots' !

I have this code that was give to me a while ago, but it seems now that it does not get the bots!

the bots array has a list of text that in contained within the HTTP_USER_AGENT
i have created my own counter so i can have a relistic figure showing how many actually people have viewed the site.

what i would like someone do kindly do for me is check this code and tell me how i should change it so it checks for any case (upper or lower) that may be in the $subject variable.

I was told that the "/" and "/i" are what does this but i am sure it is not working for me as i am still getting some bots get throught and increasing my counter.

thank you in advance for your help.

J

Code: Select all

    $subject = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
    $num_bots=0;
    $bots = array("spider","bot.htm","crawl","slurp","msnbot");
    foreach($bots as $num=>$bot){
    preg_match("/".$bot."/i", $subject, $matches);
        if(count($matches) >0){
        //Found a match! DO NOT INCREASE
        $addone = mysql_query("UPDATE counters SET value = value+1 WHERE field = 'webbot'");
        $num_bots++;
        }else{
            //no bot.
            }
    }

Jason, each of the bots decides on its own user agent string, and so at best you'll catch most of them. By carefully filtering your log files and changing the strings you look for, you may improve the filters, but there's no fail-safe solution by eliminating.

Two alternatives that may work for you / assist you

1. Look and see what / who has read your robots.txt file, and use that as a basis / additional basis for for identifying bots

2. Instead of a blacklist principle, a white list principle may work better for you - look for visits from known human visitors and count that way, perhaps?