Thanks everyone!

UPDATE 2012-08-03
Today, I had to implement this logic and it would be great to get some feedback, as I only got it working in a quite hackish way - especially I couldn't get the shorthand SQL part working so I had to resort to an if/else switch...

## SQL table schema:
    $sql = "create table if not exists views (
        bucket integer,
        id integer null,
        views integer DEFAULT (0)
    );";
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sub api_get_views {
    my $id = shift;
    my $increment = shift;

    ## get views so far
    my $views = database->prepare("SELECT * FROM views WHERE id = ?; "
+) or error database->errstr;
    $views->execute( $id );

    my ($today_bucket) = split(/\s/, HTTP::Date::time2iso());
    $today_bucket =~ s/-//g;

    my $cnt=0;
    my $bucket_exists;
    while( my $bucket = $views->fetchrow_hashref ){
        $cnt += $bucket->{views};
        $bucket_exists = 1 if $bucket->{bucket} == $today_bucket;
    }

    if($increment){
        if($bucket_exists){
            my $views = database->prepare("UPDATE views SET views = vi
+ews + 1 WHERE bucket = ? AND id = ?; ") or error database->errstr;
            $views->execute( $today_bucket, $id );
        }else{
            my $views = database->prepare("INSERT INTO views (bucket,i
+d,views) VALUES (?,?,?); ") or error database->errstr;
            $views->execute( $today_bucket, $id, 1 );
        }

        $cnt++;
    }

    return $cnt;
}
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