I am working on doing some simple analytics on a Django webstite (v1.4.1). Seeing as this data will be gathered on pretty much every server request, I figured the right way to do this would be with a piece of custom middleware.
One important metric for the site is how often given images are accessed. Since each image is its own object, I thought about using django-hitcount, but figured that was unnecessary for what I was trying to do. If it proves easier, I may use it though.
The current conundrum I face is that I don't want to query the database and look for a given object for every HttpRequest that occurs. Instead, I would like to wait until a successful response (indicated by an HttpResponse.status of 200 or whatever), and then query the server and update a hit field for the corresponding image. The reason the only way to access the path of the image is in process_request, while the only way to access the status code is in process_response.
So, what do I do? Is it as simple as creating a class variable that can hold the path and then lookup the file once the response code of 200 is returned, or should I just use django-hitcount?
Thanks for your help