Log hits to update.rdf to estimate userbase

[diegodlh]

Zotero checks for updates automatically, both for Zotero itself and for its add-ons. It does this by checking the update URL provided in the add-on install.rdf file.

Right now this points to the update.rdf file in this repository. However, Github does not provide request logs, which could be useful to estimate the number of users.

Alternatively, a proxy URL such as those provided by iplogger (e.g., https://iplogger.org/2AUhM5) could be provided. I tried this and it works, but it implies a security concern, because where the URL finally points to is potentially out of my control.

Another option would be to host the update.rdf file as a Wikipedia userscript, and provide the raw URL to it (e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Js/6tabs-vector.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript). Would requests to this raw URL be tracked by https://pageviews.toolforge.org/? It wouldn't be as complete as an IP log, but it would be more than what Github gives.

Edit: whether this would be tracked by pageviews was asked here.

Edit2: just realized this wouldn't work because update.rdf is not javascript.

[diegodlh]

As a workaround, one can use the Github API to count number of times a release asset has been downloaded: https://docs.github.com/en/rest/reference/repos#releases

[Dominic-DallOsto]

This provides a nice visualisation.