HTTP Tracker - "ping=1" not creating new visitors

Support & Bugs
1

I’ve been transitioning to Matomo after Google Analytics dropped their UA system and rendered my old stream analytics system broken. After several attempts to get Matomo working with Icecast, I’ve developed a solution to show clients and listener duration by running a script every few minutes to generate an API URL.

Unfortunately, I’m left with an issue. Actions are being duplicated each time the script runs. So, here’s where I’m stuck:

  • When ping=1 is set in the URL, Matomo will update the same action, but no new visitors are counted.
  • When ping=1 is removed from the URL, Matomo will add new visitors but continuously add a new action each time the script runs (so I have a ton of consecutive folders).

What I’d like to do is count a new visitor but also count how long a visitor has been on a page without seeing all the consecutive folders (because it gets crowded quickly). Of course, I’m still a bit new to this, and seeing all the stacking actions may be normal behavior for Matomo, and I might not be aware of this.

My URL structure is below (omitting &s):

...matomo.php?
idsite=7
rec=1
action_name=Stream%20Listener
url=encoded stream URL
apiv=1
urlref=encoded stream URL
token_auth=token
ua=user agent from script
cip=ip from script

Thanks!

2

After leaving the script running each minute, with report archival running each hour, I’m assuming this is normal behavior for Matomo.

I’m able to see a real-time listener count as well as a trend of visitors across multiple hours, which is what I’ve been looking for.

If anyone has any insight on this, I’d love to hear from you!