How can I track repeated visitors using cookies

I want to track repeated user for our web site to show others by using coo开发者_StackOverflowkies. It can be either java or javascript.

If you want a very simple system, you can write a cookie with a GUID-type value when the user first visits. Then you'll get this cookie back on every request. When you handle the request, log the info you want to track, along with the GUID from the cookie, in your data base.

Slice and dice as needed.

You'll find it's easy to say but hard to do and get any meaningful data.