Piwik Table Usage

Hey Guys, I’m new to piwik API, i was given a database in mysql and been asked to find some stuffs, but i couldn’t be sure whether i’m going in the right path, so please help me. i got piwik_log_action,piwik_log_link_visit_action,Piwik_log_visit which have the most data out of the remaining table, where i have all null for the column in “user_id” which is in piwik_log_visit, i don’t get what is “idvisitor” is it a session id of a user?, If you could give some insights on the table it would be much helpful, BTW i too had a look on the https://developer.piwik.org/guides/persistence-and-the-mysql-backend#log-data-persistence which is not much helpful.

By default, Piwik uses the idvisitor (random value, generated for new users, retrieved from the first party cookie for the returning visitors) or config_id (user fingerprint) to recognize visitors. UserID column is set to null by default. Piwik uses it only if you set it manually to a given value (e.g. in the tracking code).

Thanks for the response quba, may I know how the visit is divided in the piwik visitor dashboard, it’s like visit #1 , visit #2 how is it dividing them all have same ip some time the same visitor id

Same idvisitor, same visit_last_action_time, same IP? What about the campaign? Sometimes Piwik is forcing a new visit for the same visitor if the campaign referrer changes.

Hey I will explain what I saw’n, I opened a browser and went to a page and browsed for a while and closed the browser, now when I see the dashboard I get the logs with my ip, a visitor I’d with a visit #1 say 5 pages, then again I re opened the same browser and visited the same page and closed say 5 pages, now in the dashboard its says visit #1 10 actions, after some time say roughly around 2 hours I reopened the browser n did the same it creates a new visit, visit #2 n start adding the action into them, then I managed to find the visit inter parameter which default set to 30 min, I went through some old logs n seen the difference between two visits r say 5 min, 3 min, 40 min. How come is that?

There are situations when Piwik forces a new visit for the same visitor:

If you want to troubleshoot it further, we have to go one by one with examples from your log_visit table.