Pixeltrack

The usage of web analytics plays a critical part in the services of many service providers on the Internet today. Clients often want to see statistics about the number of users that visit particular pages in order to understand issues and make operational changes.

Use Case Example

Consider the case where a merchandiser is not completing the number of sales that it expects. The typical process of completing a sale is:

1. Search website for item
2. Select item and go to item page
3. Add item to cart
4. Initiate checkout process
5. Enter shipping and payment information
6. Complete transaction

Customers may abort the purchase of an item for any number of reasons at any one of these steps. The utility of page view metrics comes from being able to see at which step the drop off in the number occurs, which may indicate the presence of bugs or unintuitive UI.

Pixeltrack serves as a way to report these metrics and points clients in the direction of which processes they need to examine for bugs, UI choices or other issues.

Routes

Application Routes

• GET /: root route

Campaign Routes

• GET api/v1/campaigns/: returns a json list of all campaigns
• GET api/v1/campaigns/[ID]: returns a json of all information about a campaign
• POST api/v1/campaigns/: creates a new campaign

Tracker Routes

• GET api/v1/campaigns/[CAMPAIGN_ID]/trackers/: returns a json of all trackers for a campaign
• GET api/v1/campaigns/[CAMPAIGN_ID]/trackers/[ID].json: returns a json of all information about a tracker
• GET api/v1/campaigns/[CAMPAIGN_ID]/trackers/[ID]/document: returns a text/plain document with a tracker document
• POST api/v1/campaigns/[CAMPAIGN_ID]/trackers/: creates a new tracker for a campaign

Install

Install this API by cloning the relevant branch and installing required gems:

$ bundle install

Create a configuration file to store database key

$ touch config_env.rb
$ gedit config_env.rb
$ rake key:generate (Generate database key)

Amend config_env.rb file with the following:

config_env :development, :test do
  set 'DB_KEY', "generated key"
  set 'JWK256', "JWK encryption key"
end

Testing

Test this API by running:

$ rake db:migrate RACK_ENV=test
$ bundle exec rake spec

Execute

Run this API during deployment:

$ rake db:migrate (If switching from test environment)
$ bundle exec rackup

or use autoloading during development:

$ bundle exec rerun rackup

Reset DB Operations

$ rake db:reset Dump everything
$ rake db:seed Populate the database with test values
$ rake db:reseed Dump DB and populate with test values

Location

Deployed instance