Simple Node Analytics

Simple web analytics to better understand user interaction and behaviour. Client and server are written in Javascript. All tracking results and events are written to a database by a simple Node.js service. Right now, there are no plans to build a fancy analytics dashboard.

Client

The analytics client has a modular structure and can be configured for multiple trackers:

• click: Simple click tracking for buttons and other interactive elements. Activated with the attribute data-click="my-click-event".
• observer: Examines whether a specific element in the viewport is visibly thought for examining the scroll depth. Activated with the attribute data-observer="my-element-is-visible-event".
• timer: records how much time a user spends on the site. The timer pauses on * blur * events and continues on * focus * events. Activated with the attribute data-timer=my-timer-event".
• custom: Space for custom Javascript events that generate a tracking request.

Include the client library in the head of your HTML:

<script src="http://localhost:3010/build/client.bundle.js"></script>

Initialize the analytics suite with all trackers:

analytics.init({
  serviceUrl: 'http://localhost:3010/track',
  projectId: 'demo',
  tracker: {
    click: true,
    observer: true,
    timer: true,
    custom: true
  }
});

Server

The Analytics service accepts tracking requests and stores them in a MongoDB collection.

$ node server

For each request, the value for the corresponding tracking key and device is incremented. Here's an example of getting headers on desktop devices:

{
  "_id" : ObjectId("5b179f0e8fd447fe98595b14"),
  "project" : "demo",
  "device" : "desktop",
  "key" : "observer-0-header",
  "value" : 2231
}

Exporting analytics data from a MongoDB collection to JSON is done by using the mongoexport command:

$ mongoexport --db analytics --collection demo --out ./demo.json --jsonArray

MongoDB could be easily swapped for another database like PostgreSQL.

Roadmap

Client

• Plugin: Devices, sizes
• Plugin: Errors, exceptions
• Plugin: Geolocations
• Plugin: Load times
• Plugin: Custom events

Service

• Config file for analytics service (MongoDB, port, ...)
• Command line interface, e.g. simple-node-analytics -p 3100
• Friendly errors (no database, port in use, ...)
• Protected API for retrieving analytics data