rrweb

What is rrweb?

rrweb is a library for recording and replaying user interactions on web applications. It captures user events such as clicks, scrolls, and form inputs, and allows you to replay these events to understand user behavior or debug issues.

What are rrweb's main functionalities?

Recording User Interactions

This feature allows you to record user interactions on a web page. The `record` function starts recording and emits events that can be sent to a server or saved locally.

const rrweb = require('rrweb');
const stopFn = rrweb.record({
  emit(event) {
    // send event to your server or save it locally
    console.log(event);
  },
});
// To stop recording
stopFn();

Replaying Recorded Sessions

This feature allows you to replay recorded sessions. The `rrwebPlayer` takes the recorded events and replays them in a specified container element.

const rrwebPlayer = require('rrweb-player');
new rrwebPlayer({
  target: document.body, // the container element
  data: {
    events: [], // the array of recorded events
  },
});

Custom Event Handling

This feature allows you to handle custom events during the recording. You can filter and process specific types of events as needed.

const rrweb = require('rrweb');
const stopFn = rrweb.record({
  emit(event) {
    if (event.type === 'custom') {
      // handle custom event
      console.log('Custom event:', event);
    }
  },
});
// To stop recording
stopFn();

Other packages similar to rrweb

fullstory

FullStory is a digital experience analytics platform that captures and analyzes user interactions on web and mobile applications. It provides similar functionalities to rrweb but includes advanced analytics and insights.

mouseflow

Mouseflow is a session replay and heatmap tool that tracks user interactions on your website. It provides functionalities similar to rrweb, including session recordings and heatmaps, but also offers funnel analysis and form analytics.

README

rrweb

中文文档

rrweb refers to 'record and replay the web', which is a tool for recording and replaying users' interactions on the web.

Currently, rrweb has already solved many difficult problems in recording and replaying, but the data structure may still be changed before the release of Version 1.0. So please be cautious to use rrweb in the production environment.

Project Structure

rrweb is mainly composed of 3 parts:

• rrweb-snapshot, including both snapshot and rebuilding features. The snapshot is used to convert the DOM and its state into a serializable data structure with an unique identifier; the rebuilding feature is to rebuild the snapshot into corresponding DOM.
• rrweb, including two functions, record and replay. The record function is used to record all the mutations in the DOM; the replay is to replay the recorded mutations one by one according to the corresponding timestamp.
• rrweb-player, is a player UI for rrweb, providing GUI-based functions like pause, fast-forward, drag and drop to play at any time.

Roadmap

• rrweb
  • handle cross-domain request errors
  • record in web worker
  • implement transmission data compression
  • verify recording in mobile browser
• rrweb-player
  • implement efficient progress bar drag and drop control
  • add full screen mode
• extensions
  • hijack the console API and record corresponding events
  • hijack Ajax/fetch API and record request events
  • use TraceKit to log exception events

Internal Design

• serialization
• incremental snapshot
• replay
• sandbox

Contribute Guide

Since we want the record and replay sides to share a strongly typed data structure, rrweb is developed with typescript which provides stronger type support.

Typescript handbook

1. Fork the rrweb component repository you want to patch.
2. Run npm install to install required dependencies.
3. Patch the code and pass all the tests.
4. Push the code and create a pull request.

In addition to adding integration tests and unit tests, rrweb also provides a REPL testing tool.

Run npm run repl to launch a browser and ask for a URL you want to test on the CLI:

Enter the url you want to record, e.g https://react-redux.realworld.io:

Waiting for the browser to open the specified page and print following messages on the CLI:

Enter the url you want to record, e.g https://react-redux.realworld.io: https://github.com
Going to open https://github.com...
Ready to record. You can do any interaction on the page.
Once you want to finish the recording, enter 'y' to start replay:

At this point, you can interact in the web page. After the desired operations have been recorded, enter 'y' on the CLI, and the test tool will replay the operations to verify whether the recording was successful.

The following messages will be printed on the CLI during replay:

Enter 'y' to persistently store these recorded events:

At this point, you can enter 'y' again on the CLI. The test tool will save the recorded session into a static HTML file and prompt for the location:

Saved at PATH_TO_YOUR_REPO/temp/replay_2018_11_23T07_53_30.html

This file uses the latest rrweb bundle code, so we can run npm run bundle:browser after patching the code, then refresh the static file to see and debug the impact of the latest code on replay.