I have this thing on my website where i want to limit user upload to MAX one upload in a month.

I have the following attributs, in my IP-check table:
id, ip, date

I belive that shuld be all i need... i don't create users on my website, so no user table is needed.

First tought i could make a 30 day counter thing.... but i think that would anoy my visitors, because if they upload in the middle of one month they could not upload again before the middle of the next month, and the rules are just "one upload pr. month".... so they should be able to upload EG. in the end of one month and then in the beginning of the next. - BUT still only one upload pr month


Hope someone know as good soulution for this

what about dynamic IPs???

Well, my users will be from the Faroe Islands and here most people have static IP.

The once that have dynamic ip, i just need to control by name or something....

By the way, i don't think there is any way to be 100% sure that there will be only one upload a month pr. users, no matter how you do it.

so.... has anyone an answer for this one ?

By depending on IP, there is a real chance that your method could be exploited because of dynamic IP's and ppl using IP gateways (I think that is what it is called).

To ensure a true method of limiting, you would require a login system in which a user would have to login before they could upload, and have the db record the datetime of the upload.

People could then just create several users.... so the problem would be pretty much the same..... - the only difference is that it takes time to create a user.



Just hope someone can answer the question, because i'm going to need someting simular in another php file as well.

It's a little difficult to come up with a definitive answer when you keep deciding each one has drawbacks as all solutions will have

do everything possible, check ips, use membership limits and set cookies.

All these can be defeated by some means or another, but Hey! Welcome to the Internet

I only wanted to make an MySQL & PHP check if something has been posted within a specific month.... E.G. August...... but it needs to work in other months as well.

As i said in my first post i'v considerd a 30day counter thing... but then people would need to wait 30days to post next time, and that would anoy a few people if they posted in the end of august, and a new month is just arround the corner.

So is it possible to chek on ONLY current month and year, and forget about day in the month ? - the datebase DATE looks like this 2006-08-22 ..... is it possible to ONLY check current date on the month number and year number ?

If you stored the date of the download in your table, you could get the most recent download date for that IP, and do the following comparison to check if they have downloaded something this month:

if (date("Ym", $row["downloadDate"] == date("Ym")) {

...

}

naturally, you would want to close all the parentheses in the correct places.