Minimal Analytics Snippet

minimal-analytics-snippet.js

(function (context, trackingId, options) {
    const history = context.history;
    const doc = document;
    const nav = navigator || {};
    const storage = localStorage;
    const encode = encodeURIComponent;
    const pushState = history.pushState;
    const typeException = 'exception';
    const generateId = () => Math.random().toString(36);
    const getId = () => {
        if (!storage.cid) {
            storage.cid = generateId()
        }
        return storage.cid;
    };
    const serialize = (obj) => {
        var str = [];
        for (var p in obj) {
            if (obj.hasOwnProperty(p)) {
                if(obj[p] !== undefined) {
                    str.push(encode(p) + "=" + encode(obj[p]));
                }
            }
        }
        return str.join("&");
    };
    const track = (
        type, 
        eventCategory, 
        eventAction, 
        eventLabel, 
        eventValue, 
        exceptionDescription, 
        exceptionFatal
    ) => {
        const url = 'https://www.google-analytics.com/collect';
        const data = serialize({
            v: '1',
            ds: 'web',
            aip: options.anonymizeIp ? 1 : undefined,
            tid: trackingId,
            cid: getId(),
            t: type || 'pageview',
            sd: options.colorDepth && screen.colorDepth ? `${screen.colorDepth}-bits` : undefined,
            dr: doc.referrer || undefined,
            dt: doc.title,
            dl: doc.location.origin + doc.location.pathname + doc.location.search,
            ul: options.language ? (nav.language || "").toLowerCase() : undefined,
            de: options.characterSet ? doc.characterSet : undefined,
            sr: options.screenSize ? `${(context.screen || {}).width}x${(context.screen || {}).height}` : undefined,
            vp: options.screenSize && context.visualViewport ? `${(context.visualViewport || {}).width}x${(context.visualViewport || {}).height}` : undefined,
            ec: eventCategory || undefined,
            ea: eventAction || undefined,
            el: eventLabel || undefined,
            ev: eventValue || undefined,
            exd: exceptionDescription || undefined,
            exf: typeof exceptionFatal !== 'undefined' && !!exceptionFatal === false ? 0 : undefined,
        });

        if(nav.sendBeacon) {
            nav.sendBeacon(url, data)
        } else {
            var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
            xhr.open("POST", url, true);
            xhr.send(data);
        }
    };
    const trackEvent = (category, action, label, value) => track('event', category, action, label, value);
    const trackException = (description, fatal) => track(typeException, null, null, null, null, description, fatal);
    history.pushState = function (state) {
        if (typeof history.onpushstate == "function") {
            history.onpushstate({ state: state });
        }
        setTimeout(track, options.delay || 10);
        return pushState.apply(history, arguments);
    }
    track();
    context.ma = {
        trackEvent,
        trackException
    }
})(window, "XX-XXXXXXXXX-X", {
    anonymizeIp: true,
    colorDepth: true,
    characterSet: true,
    screenSize: true,
    language: true
});

Before I saw this, I always host ga.js locally to improve performance. I'm thinking post action to GA with nginx in the back-end.
I have the same problem like you with GTM, thank you for making this!
Could this method be used to track speed, events and goals too?

@tudou-wp currently not, but I got a lot of feature requests exposing a function to add events. It shouldn't add any significant size.

For all those who want to create their own version, here is the official documentation of this GA endpoint: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/v1/reference

I'm using https://babeljs.io/en/repl to minify and convert it to a snippet.

Any way to add the Optimize snippet to this code?

Improvements:

• Using navigator.sendBeacon if available
• Ability to track events
• Ability to track exceptions

Hi David, I find this useful. Thanks.

Clever! Would be interested in seeing this on npm, obviously with the mga.init({...}) abstracted out.
Thanks for sharing!

Great idea! Just used it to make a VuePress plugin.

What's the onpushstate bit for?

To compliance with the GDPR and similar, we have 2 options:

ga('create', 'UA-123456789-1');
ga('set', 'allowAdFeatures', false);
ga('set', 'anonymizeIp', true);
ga('send', 'pageview');

This supports "anonymizeIp"... is it possible to support "allowAdFeatures"?

FYI, I've launched a WordPress plugin based on your code... https://wordpress.org/plugins/minimal-analytics/

1. Thanks for sharing this implementation!

2. Please add somewhere on the https://minimalanalytics.com/ the time when was last updated the snippet code from there.

3. Could you make a version that have implemented the "timing" features?
   https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/v1/parameters#timing

Thanks!

Support for custom parameters, for example to implement custom dimensions, would be great.

How to send pageview hit?

ma('pageview', pageURL); ??

EDIT: I think only track(); will record pageview hit. I need to record pageview on quick view products.

Will this work with the 'ga-disable-UA-XXXXXXX-X' OptOut Cookie?

Awesome script!

I am running into a similar problem than @nwellnhof, I am using it as a Nuxt plugin (similarly as https://nuxtjs.org/faq/google-analytics#how-to-use-google-analytics-), but it seems that when changing routes, no even is recorded.

Typically, Nuxt tells us to add something like

  app.router.afterEach((to, from) => {
    /*
    ** We tell Google Analytics to add a `pageview`
    */
    ga('set', 'page', to.fullPath)
    ga('send', 'pageview')
  })

Also works for single page applications made with the likes of react and vue.js.

Did someone verify it?

I've created an npm packages for this, mainly for personal use: https://www.npmjs.com/package/minimal-analytics

I'm also thinking about creating an even more minimal version of analytics, that does the bare minimum of tracking (i.e. only pageviews + ip) just like StatCounter in the old day.

Any idea if this snippet functions well in an external script file? It's kind of a big block to embed on every page.

edit: I've had a chance to test this. Everything seems to work just fine in a separate file.

@martpie any luck with Nuxt.js integration? I'm in the same boat as you, just found this.

Great script, thanks!

@curtisbelt @martpie I've got it working with Nuxt.js. I've put the code in a separate js file in my static folder and included it in the head property in my nuxt.config.js file. Analytics is showing the slugs of the pages I visited.

I'm with @waqasy: Is it possible to do something like ma.trackPageview(pageURL)? It looks like some old pageview code was removed...

Can anyone who uses this please tell me whether it only tracks pageviews or other basic stuffs like sessions and number of users?

Hi @kaknut! Yes, pageviews are tracked correctly as well as session and number of users. Example of something that's not being tracked: RUM performance.

Fantastic script! You can probably make it support hashed routes out of the box by adding + doc.hash @ L47

any idea how to implement sampleRate in this script?

btw, I just realized this fails in Safari incognito mode due to localStorage not available

(DOM Exception 22): The quota has been exceeded.

I created one that's compatible with the cookie format of the Google analytics.js script. It's very minimal, just under 700 bytes when minified

https://gist.github.com/janispritzkau/c9fe29242af53fd1b10a847da78b3406

What about using URLSearchParams instead of serialize?

Yep. It would make sense if you're only targeting browsers that support ES6 and newer. I used it in my tiny analytics script

How do I track event with inline js in minimal analytics?
Is it just Event: onClick="ma.trackEvent('Category', 'Action', 'Label', 'Value');" instead of onClick="ga('send', 'event', 'category', 'action', 'label', value);"

How do I make this script work with Turbolinks? It seems like it cannot capture pageview if I am using Turbolinks with it.

Hello, can somebody advise:

1. which code is up-to-date? the above minimal-analytics-snippet.js or https://minimalanalytics.com/ as there are differences hence not sure which one to use in the first place.
2. If I understand correctly, this will only send information when the user will visit the site and will not work in the background to measure the time spent on the website (session duration)?

@idarek, the code above is in its original form. The version on https://minimalanalytics.com/ is minified. Use the minified version in production to produce a smaller page.

Anybody about the other part? Is it possible to add timings?

2. If I understand correctly, this will only send information when the user will visit the site and will not work in the background to measure the time spent on the website (session duration)?

@idarek The snippet is very well thought but you can use it as a template to build your own and even convert it to a function and call it whenever you want, I've used this as a base for my react projects and converted it as a hook.

Installed on my website without any modification. Firstly though that will lose insight into average session duration (i know that is not accurate but always something) but I didn't which is great. Nice improvement recorded for the website as well. Great job!