Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Programmer friendly web analytics with _tics.js

_tics.js a simple JavaScript helper library for writing web analytics client side code. It supports basic page tracking and also event tracking for form fields, buttons and links.

_tics.js is intended to give you a head start with web analytics and it supports the Google Universal Analytics JavaScript library out of the box. Included is a Google Analytics provider, written as a separate module. It can easily be replaced by a custom provider consuming your favorite web analytics tool. 

The source code is on GitHub.

Usage

Basic - The "it just works" scenario
Activate _tics.js by calling the page() function. Run the events() function if you want to track form fields.

Basic live example here (jsFiddle)


More features - The "couldn't you just do this?" scenario
The library includes three specialized functions. The functions are activated when elements are decorated with the attribute data-val-analyze-custom. The included functions are:
get the value of a field (getValue)
get the relative change within a field (getRelativeChange)
get the position of a clicked link in a list of banners or in a menu (getItemInSection, combined with the attributes data-section and data-item)

More features live example here (jsFiddle)


Customization -The "extra special for you" scenario
The getValue, getRelativeChange and getItemInSection functions are included in _tics.js. But you can also add your custom function by appending them to the library. Use your favorite library for traversing the DOM if you like.

If you want to override or hijack one of the existing functions, just call the add function and use the same name as one of the built in functions. You can also add any event that is not covered by the built in features.

Customization live example here (jsFiddle)


The source code is on GitHub. Let me know what you think about it!

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