Django Page Views

A simple and efficient Django app for tracking page views on your website.

Features

• Track page views for any model or view with a simple mixin
• Support for Django's View, ListView, and DetailView classes
• Automatic view tracking through middleware
• Advanced analytics: total views, unique views, time-based filtering
• Popular content tracking
• Support for Celery for async processing (optional)
• Template tags for easy integration in templates
• Bot filtering and throttling to prevent duplicate counts
• Management command to clean old records

Installation

pip install django-pageviews

Or for async support:

pip install django-pageviews[async]

Quick Start

1. Add "django_pageviews" to your INSTALLED_APPS setting:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'django_pageviews',
]

2. Add the middleware to your settings:

MIDDLEWARE = [
    ...
    'django_pageviews.middleware.PageViewMiddleware',
]

3. Run migrations to create the PageView model:

python manage.py migrate django_pageviews

4. Add the mixin to any model or view you want to track:

from django.db import models
from django_pageviews.mixins import PageViewMixin

# For models:
class Article(PageViewMixin, models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    content = models.TextField()
    # ...

# For class-based views:
from django.views.generic import View, ListView, DetailView
from django_pageviews.mixins import PageViewMixin

# Most basic usage - no additional methods needed
class ArticleDetailView(PageViewMixin, DetailView):
    model = Article
    # The mixin automatically uses self.object - no extra code needed!

class ArticleListView(PageViewMixin, ListView):
    model = Article
    # By default, this will track the first object in the queryset
    
    # ONLY override this if you need custom tracking behavior:
    # def get_tracked_object(self):
    #     # For example, to track the category instead of the first item
    #     return Category.objects.get(slug=self.kwargs['category_slug'])

class ArticleView(PageViewMixin, View):
    model = Article  # Important! This enables automatic object resolution
    # The mixin will automatically find objects from URL kwargs (pk, id, slug)

5. Use the included template tags in your templates:

{% load pageview_tags %}

<!-- Display view count for an object -->
<p>{% get_view_count article %} views</p>

<!-- Display popular objects -->
{% get_popular_objects 'Article' 'blog' limit=5 as popular_articles %}
{% for article, count in popular_articles %}
    <li>{{ article.title }} - {{ count }} views</li>
{% endfor %}

Configuration

Add these settings to your settings.py file (all are optional with sensible defaults):

# Throttle time in seconds to prevent duplicate counts from the same user
PAGEVIEW_THROTTLE_SECONDS = 20

# Number of views to process in one batch (for async processing)
PAGEVIEW_BATCH_SIZE = 100

# Maximum time in seconds to hold views in buffer
PAGEVIEW_BUFFER_TIMEOUT = 300

Async Processing

For high-traffic sites, enable async processing with Celery and Redis:

1. Install with async support:

   pip install django-pageviews[async]

2. See ASYNC_USAGE.md for detailed setup instructions, including:

   • Setting up Celery and Redis
   • Running both Celery worker and beat processes
   • Advanced configuration options
   • Performance tuning recommendations
   • Troubleshooting common issues

Management Commands

Clean up old page view records:

python manage.py clean_pageviews --days=90

License

MIT