How to query the number of view counts for a post

Question

I use JetPack stats to follow the stats for my blog. I would like to extract the top 10 most-viewed posts for a given period (e.g. last month).

I used the WordPress stats plugin API before which worked nicely, but after upgrade to JetPack this doesn't work anymore.

Is there an API which allows me to query the number of view counts for a post?

Answer 1

Inside the Database

This option is recorded in the database and is used by the Dashboard widget:

get_option( 'stats_cache' );

It returns an array like this:

array(
    ['7375996b7a989f95a6ed03ca7c899b1f'] => array(
        [1353440532] => array(
            [0] => array(
                ['post_id'] => 0
                ['post_title'] => 'Home page'
                ['post_permalink'] => 'http://www.example.com/'
                ['views'] => 1132
            )
            [1] => array(
                ['post_id'] => 4784
                ['post_title'] => 'Hello World!'
                ['post_permalink'] => 
                ['views'] => 493
            )
            /* till item [9] */

Querying WordPress.com

It is possible to call the following Jetpack function:

if( function_exists( 'stats_get_csv' ) ) {
    $top_posts = stats_get_csv( 'postviews', 'period=month&limit=30' );
}

Which returns:

array(
    [0] => array(
        ['post_id'] => 0
        ['post_title'] => 'Home page'
        ['post_permalink'] => 'http://www.example.com/'
        ['views'] => 6806
    )
    [1] => array(
        ['post_id'] => 8005
        ['post_title'] => 'Hello World!'
        ['post_permalink'] => 
        ['views'] => 1845
    )           
    /* till item [29] */

Function get_stats_csv

^{/plugins/jetpack/modules/stats.php}

The function get_stats_csv calls http://stats.wordpress.com/csv.php. If we visit this address, we get this response:

Error: api_key is a required parameter.

Required parameters: api_key, blog_id or blog_uri.
Optional parameters: table, post_id, end, days, limit, summarize.

Parameters:
api_key     String    A secret unique to your WordPress.com user account.
blog_id     Integer   The number that identifies your blog. 
                      Find it in other stats URLs.
blog_uri    String    The full URL to the root directory of your blog. 
                      Including the full path.
table       String    One of views, postviews, referrers, referrers_grouped, 
                      searchterms, clicks, videoplays.
post_id     Integer   For use with postviews table.
end         String    The last day of the desired time frame. 
                      Format is 'Y-m-d' (e.g. 2007-05-01) 
                      and default is UTC date.
days        Integer   The length of the desired time frame. 
                      Default is 30. "-1" means unlimited.
period      String    For use with views table and the 'days' parameter. 
                      The desired time period grouping. 'week' or 'month'
                      Use 'days' as the number of results to return 
                      (e.g. '&period=week&days=12' to return 12 weeks)
limit       Integer   The maximum number of records to return. 
                      Default is 100. "-1" means unlimited. 
                      If days is -1, limit is capped at 500.
summarize   Flag      If present, summarizes all matching records.
format      String    The format the data is returned in, 
                      'csv', 'xml' or 'json'. 
                      Default is 'csv'.

Non-working query example: 
?api_key=123456789abc&blog_id=155&table=referrers&days=30&limit=-1&summarize

Result format is csv with one row per line and column names in first row.

Strings containing double quotes, commas, or "\n" are enclosed in double-quotes. 
    Double-qoutes in strings are escaped by inserting another double-quote.
Example: "pet food" recipe
Becomes: """pet food"" recipe"

Developers, please cache the results for at least 180 seconds.