Easiest way to restrict thread view count to unique IP's?

[ScottW23]

In vb 3.8.4, what do you think would be the easiest/simplest way to make it so that the thread view count is only incremented for each unique user? In other words, hitting refresh on a thread page wouldn't increment the count, unless the user changed IP's.

Would I need to maintain a database of IP's and check the table before incrementing the count, or is there a simpler way? I could use cookies to do it, but if someone disabled their cookies, then they could just increment the count at will.

Nevermind I decided to just code it. This goes in showthread.php around line 489 replacing the existing views counter code.

$userip = $_SERVER[REMOTE_ADDR]; 
$ipnum = ip_address_to_number($userip);
 
        $getuip = $db->query_first("
                SELECT count(*) as views  
                FROM ipchecker
                WHERE threadid = ".intval($threadinfo['threadid'])." AND ipaddr=".$ipnum
        ); 
 
if ($getuip['views'] <=1) {
 if ($vbulletin->options['threadviewslive'])
 {
        // doing it as they happen; for optimization purposes, this cannot use a DM!
        $db->shutdown_query(" 
                UPDATE " . TABLE_PREFIX . "thread
                SET views = views + 1 
                WHERE threadid = " . intval($threadinfo['threadid'])
        ); 
 }
 else
 {   
        // or doing it once an hour
        $db->shutdown_query(" 
                INSERT INTO " . TABLE_PREFIX . "threadviews (threadid)
                VALUES (" . intval($threadinfo['threadid']) . ')' 
        ); 
        $db->shutdown_query("
                INSERT INTO ipchecker VALUES (NULL,".time().",".$ipnum.",".intval($threadinfo['threadid']).')'
        ); 
 }
} 

function ip_address_to_number($IPaddress) 
{
    if ($IPaddress == "") { 
        return 0; 
    } else {
        $ips = split ("\.", "$IPaddress");
        return ($ips[3] + $ips[2] * 256 + $ips[1] * 256 * 256 + $ips[0] * 256 * 256 * 256);
    } 
}

Also need to create the table for the IP's:

CREATE TABLE `ipchecker` (
`id` int(10) NOT NULL auto_increment,
`datestamp` int(10) NOT NULL default '0',
`ipaddr` int(10) NOT NULL default '0',
`threadid` int(10) NOT NULL default '0',
PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
KEY `ipcheck` (`threadid`,`ipaddr`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=1 DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ;

And I setup a separate cron to delete any row older than 24 hours to declutter the table. So it restricts views to 1 unique IP per day.