PHP tracking mail and link clicks

Question

I'm trying to track whether someone (not who) opened the mail I sent via PHP script and clicked on a link I embedded in the mail.

Prepare variables in the mail:

mail-click tracking with an image which will be loaded in record.php:

<img src="http://localhost:8090/post_ch/admin/record.php?read=1" alt="Tracker">

link-click tracking:

<a href="http://localhost:8090/post_ch/portal/indexbab9.php?click=1">Link</a>

Insert records in DB

record.php for mail-click records:

<?php
// (inside "record.php")
header('Content-Type: image/gif');

if(isset($_GET['read']))
{
    $pdo = new PDO('SECURE (should work)');

    $statement = $pdo->prepare("INSERT INTO employee_clickedmail (clickedmail) VALUES (1)");
}

//push out image
if(ini_get('zlib.output_compression')) { ini_set('zlib.output_compression', 'Off'); }
header('Pragma: public');   // required
header('Expires: 0');       // no cache
header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0');
header('Cache-Control: private',false);
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="blank.gif"');
header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
header('Content-Length: '.filesize('blank.gif'));   // provide file size
readfile('blank.gif');      // push it out
exit();
?>

AND for link-clicks:

<?php
if(isset($_GET['click']))
{
    $pdo = new PDO('SECURE (should work)');
    $statement = $pdo->prepare("INSERT INTO employee_clickedlink (clickedlink) VALUES (1)");
}
?>

As you can see I simply want to insert the value "1" into the tables everytime someone loads the images and clicks the link in the mail. Anyone knows the problem?

Answer 1

For each prepare() statement, you need to call execute() in order to actually execute the query against the database.