Public analytics as a Node.js microservice, no sysadmin experience required.
A tiny analytics server with ~100 lines of code, easy to run and hack around on. It does one thing, and it does it well: count the views of something and making the views publicly accessible via an API.
(there is currently no frontend to display pretty graphs, feel free to build one yourself!)
Running your own micro-analytics is just two tiny commands away:
npm install -g micro-analytics-cli
micro-analytics
That's it, the analytics server is now running at localhost:3000! 🎉
To deploy a server either refer to server-setup.md for instructions on manually acquiring and setting up a server or use now and deploy with a single command:
$ now micro-analytics/micro-analytics-cli
> Deployment complete! https://micro-analytics-asfdasdf.now.sh
To track a view of x, simply send a request to /x. This is how you'd track page views for a website: (though note that this can be used to track anything you want)
<script>
fetch('servicedomain.com' + window.location.pathname)
// Log total pageviews for current page to console
.then(response => response.json())
.then(json => console.log(json.views))
.catch(err => console.log('Something went wrong:', err))
</script>If you send a GET request, the request will increment the views and return the total views for the id. (in this case "x") If you send a POST request, the views will increment but you don't get the total views back.
If you just want to get the views for an id and don't want to increment the views during a GET request, set inc to false in your query parameter. (/x?inc=false)
If you want to get all views for all ids, set the all query parameter to true on a root request. (i.e. /?all=true) If you pass the all parameter to an id, all ids starting with that pathname will be included. E.g. /x?all=true will match views for /x, /xyz but not /y.
$ micro-analytics --help
Usage: micro-analytics [options] [command]
Commands:
help Display help
Options:
-a, --adapter [value] Database adapter used (defaults to "flat-file-db")
-h, --help Output usage information
-H, --host [value] Host to listen on (defaults to "0.0.0.0")
-p, --port <n> Port to listen on (defaults to 3000)
-v, --version Output the version number
By default, micro-analytics uses flat-file-db, a fast in-process flat file database, which makes for easy setup and backups.
This works fine for side-project usage, but for a production application with bajillions of visitors you might want to use a real database with a database adapter. Install the necessary npm package (e.g. micro-analytics-adapter-xyz) and then specify the DB_ADAPTER environment variable: $ DB_ADAPTER=xyz micro-analytics or use the --adapter cli option.
These are the available database adapters, made by the community:
Don't see your favorite database here? Writing your own adapter is pretty easy, we've even written the tests for you! See writing-adapters.md for a guide on how to write an adapter for your database of choice.
micro-analytics let's you listen into updates live with server-sent events. That means you can e.g. build a realtime dashboard for your analytics!
Note: Make sure your database adapter supports this feature. If not, bug them to implement it! micro-analytics will tell you when it starts up if it is supported, so the easiest way to find out is to start it up.
The example below shows how you can listen for events in the browser, just swap
my-deploy.now.sh with your own domain and give it a try:
const sse = new EventSource('https://my-deploy.now.sh/_realtime')
sse.onopen = function () { console.log('[sse] open') }
sse.onerror = function (error) { console.error('[sse error]', error) }
sse.addEventListener('micro-analytics-ping', function (e) { console.log('[sse]', e) })Server-sent events are not supported in all browsers. There are great, tiny polyfills available, but before you include one take a look at the caniuse table for server-sent events if you need one based on the browsers you support.
Polyfills that are supported:
Note: This list is from the documentation of the sse library we use rexxars/sse-channel, check that repo because it might have been updated.
We have a demo instance on demo.micro-analytics.io automatically deploys the master branch from this repository. Feel free to use it to test your clients.
Copyright ©️ 2017 Maximilian Stoiber & Rolf Erik Lekang, licensed under the MIT License. See license.md for more information.