@getcircuit/analytics

A thin analytics abstraction layer for Circuit's applications. It implements a basic plugin system for integrating with different analytics services.

Usage no npm install needed!

<script type="module">
  import getcircuitAnalytics from 'https://cdn.skypack.dev/@getcircuit/analytics';
</script>

README

@getcircuit/analytics

A thin analytics abstraction layer for Circuit's applications. It implements a basic plugin system for integrating with different analytics services.

Usage

  1. First things first, initialize the abstraction layer with the needed plugins:
import {
  Analytics,
  googleAnalytics,
  facebookPixel,
} from '@getcircuit/analytics'

export const analytics = Analytics({
  /** Current environment. Accessed by plugins.*/
  env: process.env.NODE_ENV,
  /** If true, logs every track call that is being made. (default: false) */
  debug: process.env.NODE_ENV === 'development',
  /** If true, tracking requests are not sent */
  dryRun: 'production',
  /** List of service plugins */
  plugins: [
    googleAnalytics({
      trackingId: 'UA-XXXXXX-X',
    }),
    facebookPixel({
      pixelId: 'xxxxxxx',
    }),
  ],
  /**
   * Optional map of hooks => plugin names.
   * Any plugin listed here will need to be explicitly included to have the related hook executed.
   * */
  explicitUse: {
    event: [...],
    pageview: [...],
    ...,
  }
})
  1. Track actions, users and errors

After initializing, you can use the abstraction layer to send:

  • Events: analytics.event(...)
  • Pageviews: analytics.pageview(...)
  • User identification: : analytics.identify(...)
  • User anonymization: analytics.anonymize(...)
  • Info logs: analytics.info(...)
  • Warning logs: analytics.warn(...)
  • Error logs: analytics.error(...)

Only plugins that implement the hook will be executed. The load of each plugin is deferred until one of its hooks are executed, which means that any analytics code will only be added to the DOM when sending a tracking request.

Plugin

A plugin is just an object with a specific set of methods, which we call 'hooks' and a name property. The only mandatory hook is the load(), responsible for adding the service script to the DOM.

{
  name: string
  load: () => MaybePromise
  unload?: () => MaybePromise
  pageview?: (opts: PageviewOptions) => MaybePromise
  event?: (opts: TrackEventOptions) => MaybePromise
  identify?: (opts: IdentifyOptions) => MaybePromise
  anonymize?: () => MaybePromise
  info?: (opts: TraceOptions) => MaybePromise
  warn?: (opts: TraceOptions) => MaybePromise
  error?: (opts: TraceOptions) => MaybePromise
}

Apart from load and unload, each hook correspond to a method in the abstraction layer.

Available plugins

  • Amplitude
  • Autopilot
  • Bugsnag
  • Facebook Pixel
  • Fullstory
  • Google Analytics
  • Helpscout
  • Intercom
  • UTM Cookie
    • Used for storing UTM data in a cookie.

Hooks

Every hook has access to a this object which contains:

type PluginContext = {
  /** Configs passed onto the library */
  config: {
    env: string
    appName: string
    appVersion: string
    debug: boolean
  }
  /** Helper method to assert that an object has received certain props */
  assertKeys: (object, requiredKeys) => void
  /** Helper method to assert that every passed value is not undefined */
  assertValues: (objectOfValues) => void
}