keen-tracking

keen-tracking.js

Installation

Install this package from npm:

$ npm install keen-tracking --save

Or load it from our CDN:

<script src="https://d26b395fwzu5fz.cloudfront.net/keen-tracking-1.2.1.min.js"></script>

Read about more installation options here

Project ID & API Keys

Login to Keen IO to create a project and grab the Project ID and Write Key from your project's Access page.

Getting started

The following examples demonstrate how to implement rock-solid web analytics, capturing pageviews, clicks, and form submissions. Not interested in web analytics? Use these examples as a primer for getting up and running quickly. These examples also make use of several helpers and utilities that were designed to address common requirements and help produce insightful, valuable data models.

Full documentation is available here

If any of this is confusing, that's our fault and we would love to help. Join our Slack community or send us a message.

Using React? Check out these setup guides:

• React Flux Logger: How to instrument a Flux ReduceStore
• React Redux Middleware: How to instrument a Redux Store

Looking for compute capabilities? Check out keen-analysis.js.

Upgrading from an earlier version of keen-js? Read this.

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Setup and Pageview Tracking

First, let's create a new client instance with your Project ID and Write Key, and use the .extendEvents() method to define a solid baseline data model that will be applied to every single event that is recorded. Consistent data models and property names make life much easier later on, when analyzing and managing several event streams. This setup also includes our data enrichment add-ons, which will populate additional information when an event is received on our end.

import Keen from 'keen-tracking';

const client = new Keen({
  projectId: 'PROJECT_ID',
  writeKey: 'WRITE_KEY'
});
const helpers = Keen.helpers;
const utils = Keen.utils;

const sessionCookie = utils.cookie('rename-this-example-cookie');
if (!sessionCookie.get('guest_id')) {
  sessionCookie.set('guest_id', helpers.getUniqueId());
}

client.extendEvents(() => {
  return {
    geo: {
      info: { /* Enriched */ },
      ip_address: '${keen.ip}',
    },
    page: {
      info: { /* Enriched */ },
      title: document.title,
      url: document.location.href
    },
    referrer: {
      info: { /* Enriched */ },
      url: document.referrer
    },
    tech: {
      browser: helpers.getBrowserProfile(),
      info: { /* Enriched */ },
      user_agent: '${keen.user_agent}'
    },
    time: helpers.getDatetimeIndex(),
    visitor: {
      guest_id: sessionCookie.get('guest_id')
      /* Include additional visitor info here */
    },
    keen: {
      addons: [
        {
          name: 'keen:ip_to_geo',
          input: {
            ip: 'geo.ip_address'
          },
          output : 'geo.info'
        },
        {
          name: 'keen:ua_parser',
          input: {
            ua_string: 'tech.user_agent'
          },
          output: 'tech.info'
        },
        {
          name: 'keen:url_parser',
          input: {
            url: 'page.url'
          },
          output: 'page.info'
        },
        {
          name: 'keen:referrer_parser',
          input: {
            referrer_url: 'referrer.url',
            page_url: 'page.url'
          },
          output: 'referrer.info'
        }
      ]
    }
  }
});

client.recordEvent('pageview', {});

Every event that is recorded will inherit this baseline data model. Additional properties defined in client.recordEvent() will be applied before the event is finally recorded.

What else can this SDK do?

• Record multiple events in batches
• Extend event data models for a single event stream
• Queue events to be recorded at a given time interval

Using React? Check out these setup guides:

• React Flux Logger: How to instrument a Flux ReduceStore
• React Redux Middleware: How to instrument a Redux Store

Full documentation is available here

---

Click and Form Submit Tracking

Clicks and form submissions can be captured with .listenTo(). This function intercepts events for designated elements and creates a brief 500ms delay, allowing an HTTP request to execute before the page begins to unload.

This example further extends the client instance defined previously, and activates a simple timer when the page the loaded. Once a click or submit event is captured, the timer's value will be recorded as visitor.time_on_page.

import Keen from 'keen-tracking';

const client = new Keen({
  projectId: 'PROJECT_ID',
  writeKey: 'WRITE_KEY'
});
const helpers = Keen.helpers;
const timer = Keen.utils.timer();
timer.start();

Keen.listenTo({
  'click .nav a': function(e){
    client.recordEvent('click', {
      action: {
        intent: 'navigate',
        target_path: helpers.getDomNodePath(e.target)
      },
      visitor: {
        time_on_page: timer.value()
      }
    });
  },
  'submit form#signup': function(e){
    client.recordEvent('form-submit', {
      action: {
        intent: 'signup',
        target_path: helpers.getDomNodePath(e.target)
      },
      visitor: {
        email_address: document.getElementById('signup-email').value,
        time_on_page: timer.value()
      }
    });
  }
});

---

Block Bots and Improve Device Recognition

Install mobile-detect.js to identify basic device types and block noisy bots and crawlers.

$ npm install mobile-detect --save

This example further extends the client instance defined above, inserting a new tech.device_type property with three possible values: 'desktop', 'mobile', and 'tablet'. If the user agent is determined to be a bot, it may be ideal to abort and avoid recording an event.

import MobileDetect from 'mobile-detect';

const md = new MobileDetect();
if (md.is('bot')) {
  return false;
}

// extends client instance defined previously
client.extendEvents(() => {
  return {
    tech: {
      device_type: md.tablet() ? 'tablet' : md.mobile() ? 'mobile' : 'desktop'
    }
  };
});

Check out the many additional methods supported by mobile-detect.js to further enrich your data model.

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Contributing

This is an open source project and we love involvement from the community! Hit us up with pull requests and issues.

Learn more about contributing to this project.

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Support

Need a hand with something? Shoot us an email at [e-mail]. We're always happy to help, or just hear what you're building! Here are a few other resources worth checking out:

• API status
• API reference
• How-to guides
• Data modeling guide
• Slack (public)