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https://github.com/rubaidh/google_analytics

Automatically insert Google Analytics code into your pages
https://github.com/rubaidh/google_analytics

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Automatically insert Google Analytics code into your pages

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README 

        
= 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. :-)



== Note



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



== 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 http://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.



Copyright (c) 2006-2008 Rubaidh Ltd, released under the MIT license.