📊 Phoenix Analytics

Phoenix Analytics is embedded plug and play tool designed for Phoenix applications. It provides a simple and efficient way to track and analyze user behavior and application performance without impacting your main application's performance and database.

Key features:

⚡️ Lightweight and fast analytics tracking
⛓️‍💥 Separate storage using DuckDB to avoid affecting your main database
🔌 Easy integration with Phoenix applications
📊 Minimalistic dashboard for data visualization

The decision to use DuckDB as the storage was made to ensure that the analytics data collection process does not interfere with or degrade the performance of your application's primary transactional database. This separation allows for efficient data storage and querying specifically optimized for analytics purposes, while keeping your main database focused on serving your application's core functionality.

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Installation

If available in Hex, the package can be installed by adding phoenix_analytics to your list of dependencies in mix.exs:

def deps do
  [
    {:phoenix_analytics, "~> 0.2"}
  ]
end

Update config/config.exs

config :phoenix_analytics,
  duckdb_path: System.get_env("DUCKDB_PATH") || "analytics.duckdb",
  app_domain: System.get_env("PHX_HOST") || "example.com"

Important

In case you have dynamic cluster, you can use your PostgresDB as backend.

config :phoenix_analytics,
  duckdb_path: System.get_env("DUCKDB_PATH") || "analytics.duckdb",
  app_domain: System.get_env("PHX_HOST") || "example.com",
  postgres_conn: System.get_env("POSTGRES_CONN") || "dbname=postgres user=phoenix password=analytics host=localhost"

Important

In case you would like to proceed with Postgres option, consider enabling caching.

config :phoenix_analytics,
  duckdb_path: System.get_env("DUCKDB_PATH") || "analytics.duckdb",
  app_domain: System.get_env("PHX_HOST") || "example.com",
  postgres_conn: System.get_env("POSTGRES_CONN") || "dbname=postgres user=phoenix password=analytics host=localhost",
  cache_ttl: System.get_env("CACHE_TTL") || 120 # seconds

Add migration file

In case you have ecto less / no migrations project you can do the following:

iex -S mix PhoenixAnalytics.Migration.up()

mix ecto.gen.migration add_phoenix_analytics

Tip

Based on your configuration migration will be run in appropriate database. If only duckdb_path then in duckdb file. If duckdb_path and postgres_conn provided then in your Postgres database.

defmodule MyApp.Repo.Migrations.AddPhoenixAnalytics do
  use Ecto.Migration

  def up, do: PhoenixAnalytics.Migration.up()
  def down, do: PhoenixAnalytics.Migration.down()
end

mix ecto.migrate

Add plug to enable tracking to endpoint.ex, ‼️ add it straight after your Plug.Static

plug PhoenixAnalytics.Plugs.RequestTracker

Add dashboard route to your router.ex

use PhoenixAnalytics.Web, :router

phoenix_analytics_dashboard "/analytics"

Update your .gitignore

*.duckdb
*.duckdb.*

Warning

‼️ Please test thoroughly before proceeding to production!

Documentation

Documentation can be generated with ExDoc and published on HexDocs. Once published, the docs can be found at https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix_analytics.

Shortcuts:

t -> today
ctrl+t -> yesterday
w -> last_week
m -> last_30_days
q -> last_90_days
y -> last_12_month
ctrl+w -> previous_week
ctrl+m -> previous_month
ctrl+q -> previous_quarter
ctrl+y -> previous_year
a -> all_time

Development

If you would like to contribute, first you would need to install deps, assets and then compile css and js. I put everything under next mix command:

mix setup

Then you would need some database with seeds. Here is command for this:

DUCKDB_PATH="analytics.duckdb" mix run priv/repo/seeds.exs

or if you would like to test with Postgres backend:

cd examples/duck_postgres/

docker compose -f postgres-compose.yml up

# from project root
mix run priv/repo/seeds_postgres.exs

Note

Move database with seeds to example project which you going to use.

Lastly you can use one of example applications to start server.

cd examples/duck_only/

mix deps.get

mix phx.server

You can navigate to http://localhost:4000/dev/analytics

Performance test

I performed vegeta test on basic Macbook Air M2, to see if plug will affect application performance. Script can be found here: vegeta/vegeta.sh

With plug	Without

For whom this library

Single instance Phoenix app (duckdb only recommended)
Multiple instances of Phoenix app without auto scaling group (duckdb or postgres option can be used)
Multiple instances of Phoenix app with auto scaling group (only postgres powered apps supported at the moment)