Best Way to Implement Affiliate Link Tracking in CodeIgniter 4?

I’m building a lightweight affiliate system using CodeIgniter 4, where users can generate and share unique referral links—similar to how GrabCash manages its Profit Links system.
I want to track the following data:

• Clicks on each referral link
  
• Source of traffic (e.g., WhatsApp, Instagram, etc.)
  
• Basic analytics like IP address, timestamp, and referral ID
  

What’s the most efficient way to implement this in CodeIgniter without causing performance issues?
Should I handle it via middleware or use a dedicated controller for tracking logic?
Also, are there any best practices to prevent bot/fake clicks and ensure more accurate tracking?
Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

1) Clicks on each referral link
    Use CodeIgniter Events for tracking referrals, you may also need to use
    CodeIgniter's _remap to check the referral links.

2) Source of traffic (e.g., WhatsApp, Instagram, etc.)
    You can check what kind of app like WhatsApp is accessing your website in PHP
    by examining the User-Agent header of the HTTP request.

3) Basic analytics like IP address, timestamp, and referral ID
    This would need to be saved in the database.

What did you Try? What did you Get? What did you Expect?

Joined CodeIgniter Community 2009.  ( Skype: insitfx )

This is interesting to me because I want to rebuild in CI4 a tool I threw together with plain PHP (years ago), not specifically for affiliate purposes but more generally for click tracking. What I have now is, frankly, terrible - thus my desire to rebuild it from the ground up without breaking existing links. Current tool doesn't handle bot traffic at all, so anything I add in that regard will be an improvement. However, I don't know best practices for that, so this is something I will need to learn as well.

1) Clicks on each referral link
    Use CodeIgniter Events for tracking referrals, you may also need to use
    CodeIgniter's _remap to check the referral links.

Intriguing; I was not aware of Events. More to learn...