GoogleAnalytics

This plugin enables Google Analytics support in your application. By default it will output the analytics code for every single page automatically, if it is configured correctly. This is done by adding:

Rubaidh::GoogleAnalytics.tracker_id = 'UA-12345-67'

to your config/environment.rb, inserting your own tracker id. This can be discovered by looking at the value assigned to _uacct in the Javascript code.

If you want to disable the code insertion for particular pages, add the following to controllers that don’t want it:

skip_after_filter :add_google_analytics_code

If you are running rails 2.1 or above add install this by adding:

config.gem 'rubaidh-google_analytics', :lib => 'rubaidh/google_analytics', :source => 'http://gems.github.com'

and run:

rake gems:install

Simple. :-)

Google Analytics Tracking Code versions

This version of the plugin uses the new Google Analytics code (ga.js) by default.

To use the legacy tracking code add the following line to your config/environment.rb:

Rubaidh::GoogleAnalytics.legacy_mode = true

To use new asynchronous tracking code add the following line to your config/environment.rb:

Rubaidh::GoogleAnalytics.asynchronous_mode = true

Tracking custom variables

You can track custom variables by setting the variable using:

Rubaidh::GoogleAnalytics.set_custom_var(name, value, slot, scope)

You can set more than one custom variable at a time by making repeated calls to set_custom_var with different variable names.

Tracking outbound Links

Google Analytics only tracks intra-site links by default. To create an outbound link that is tracked use the link_to_tracked helper:

link_to_tracked(name, track_path = "/", options = {}, html_options = {})

You can use the track_path parameter to group your outbound links into logical folders inside of Google Analytics.

The other forms of link_to are also supported:

link_to_tracked_if(condition, name, track_path = "/", options = {}, html_options = {}, &block)
link_to_tracked_unless(condition, name, track_path = "/", options = {}, html_options = {}, &block)
link_to_tracked_unless_current(name, track_path = "/", options = {}, html_options = {}, &block)

To track outbound links, you should set

Rubaidh::GoogleAnalytics.defer_load = false

This will move the tracking javascript to the top of your page. (see www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55527&topic=11006)

Tracked links respect the legacy_mode flag.

Note: Link-tracking works by inserting onclick() code in the HTML. Because of this, it will overwrite any onclick that you insert in the html_options hash.

Using local copies of the Analytics Javascript files

Under certain circumstances you might find it valuable to serve a copy of the Analytics JavaScript directly from your server to your visitors, and not directly from Google. If your visitors are geograhically very far from Google, or if they have low quality international bandwidth, the loading time for the Analytics JS might kill the user experience and force you to remove the valuable tracking code from your site.

This plugin now supports local copies of the legacy and new Analytics JavaScript files, updated via a rake task and served courtesy of the Rails AssetTagHelper methods. So even if you use asset hosts, the JS will be served from the correct source and under the correct protocol (HTTP/HTTPS).

To enable cached copies and the following to your initialization code:

Rubaidh::GoogleAnalytics.local_javascript = true

Use the following rake task to update the local copy of the JavaScript file:

rake google_analytics:updates

To keep the file updated you can add the following to your Capistrano configuration:

after "deploy:symlink", "deploy:google_analytics"

namespace :deploy do
  desc "Update local Google Analytics files"
  task :google_analytics, :role => :web do
    run "cd #{current_path} && rake google_analytics:update RAILS_ENV=#{ENV['RAILS_ENV']}"
  end
end

The above Capistrano recipe will almost certainly need some adjustments based on how you run your deployments, but you should get the idea.

Overriding application-default values

If you’re using one Rails application to serve pages across multiple domains, you may wish to override the domain and tracker ID values on a controller-by-controller or view-by-view basis. You can do this by setting the override_domain_name and override_tracker_id properties. These properties are automatically reset after each use, so the values you set for domain_name and tracker_id (usually in an initializer) will apply to all other requests.

before_filter :local_analytics

def local_analytics
  Rubaidh::GoogleAnalytics.override_domain_name  = 'foo.com'
  Rubaidh::GoogleAnalytics.override_tracker_id  = 'UA-123456-7'
end

See the documentation for the GoogleAnalytics class for other configuration options.

Note: You will need to have the mocha gem installed to run the tests for this plugin.