trackablaze

Trackablaze Gem

The Trackablaze gem is both the official repository of trackers for Trackablaze as well as a stand-alone tool to execute trackers from the command line. The website and the gem are kept in version sync, so any recipes released to the gem will be simultaneously available on the web builder.

Installation

Installation is simple:

gem install trackablaze

Usage

'trackablaze' lets you track web metrics. For example, the Twitter tracker lets you find metrics about a specific Twitter account - metrics such as number of followers, number of friends, etc. Depending on the tracker used either only public information is available or authenticated information is available through oauth.

Command line usage

The command line take a configuration yaml file and executes trackers listed in it.

trackablaze track sample.yml

Contents of sample.yml

- twitter:
    params:
      handle: amolk
    metrics:
    - followers_count 
    - friends_count

- facebook_page:
    params:
      page_id: 125602120804573
  
- twitter:
    params:
      handle: msuster

This will output twitter metrics for the two twitter handles (amolk, msuster) and metrics for the facebook page specified. If a list of metrics is specified, such as for the first twitter tracker, those specific metrics are listed in the output. Otherwise, the default set of metrics are reported.

Output

--------------------------------[ Twitter ]--------------------------------
params: {"handle"=>"amolk"}
results: {"followers_count"=>25, "friends_count"=>29}
-----------------------------[ Facebook page ]-----------------------------
params: {"page_id"=>125602120804573}
results: {"likes"=>13}
--------------------------------[ Twitter ]--------------------------------
params: {"handle"=>"msuster"}
results: {"followers_count"=>35836}

Trackablaze Trackers

Trackablaze trackers collection is available in this GitHub repository. Feel free to fork and improve. You can see all of the trackers in the trackers directory.

Submitting a Tracker

Submitting a tracker is actually a very straightforward process. Trackers are made of up of a YAML config file and a ruby code file.

Sample YAML config file

title: 'Twitter'

params:
  handle:
    name: 'Twitter handle'
    description: 'This is the Twitter username'
    type: string

metrics:
  followers_count:
    name: 'Followers count'
    default: true
  friends_count:
    name: 'Friends count'

Sample tracker ruby file

require 'twitter'

module Trackablaze
  class Twitter < Tracker
    def get_metrics(tracker_items)
      tracker_items.collect {|tracker_item| get_metrics_single(tracker_item)}
    end

    def get_metrics_single(tracker_item)  
      metrics = {}

      if (tracker_item.params["handle"].nil? || tracker_item.params["handle"].empty?)
        add_error(metrics, "No handle supplied", "handle") 
        return metrics
      end
  
      user = nil
      begin
        user = ::Twitter.user(tracker_item.params["handle"])
      rescue      
      end

      if (user.nil?)
        add_error(metrics, "Invalid handle supplied", "handle")
        return metrics
      end

      tracker_item.metrics.each do |metric|
        metrics[metric] = user[metric]
      end

      metrics
    end
  end
end

A tracker must implement get_metrics() method. This method takes in an array of tracker items (i.e. configurations). Your tracker may choose to query for each tracker item one by one or use any available optimized API calls. For example, the above code queries Twitter API once for each user handle, but can be optimized by using the ::Twitter.users API call that takes an array of user handles.

It's really that simple. The gem has RSpec tests that automatically validate each tracker in the repository, so you should run rake spec as a basic sanity check before submitting a pull request. Note that these don't verify that your tracker code itself works, just that Trackablaze could properly load your tracker file and the the config file is valid.

For more information on all available options for authoring trackers, please see the wiki.

License

Trackablaze and its recipes are distributed under the MIT License.