react-tracker

Track user interaction with minimal API

What?

• React specific tracking library, usable as a higher-order component
• Flexible-scalable solution for tracking
• Can be pluged with any Analytics platform :
  • Google Tag Manager
  • Facebook Pixel
  • You can mainly do anything in the event listeners callback..
• Easy to use (Redux-like)

Installation

$ npm install --save react-tracker

This assumes you are using npm as your package manager.

Demo

To see the react-tracker in action please visit the link below.

Link

Documentation

• Initialize the Tracker
• Create event listener
  • Listen on one event
  • Listen on all events
• Create event creator
• Track Events
• Usage in React
  • Provide Tracker to the root component
  • Create Add to Cart Event Listener
  • Add to Cart Event creator
  • Create Product Component
  • Create Product List Component
  • Create mapTrackingToProps function and pass it to withTracking HOC
• Create Redux middleware to track redux actions

Initialize the Tracker

Create a Tracker holding the tracked events History of your app.

Tracker API is { on, trackEvent, getHistory }.

• You can pass your already defined event listeners to the constructor like so:

const tracker = new Tracker([trackAddToCart])

• Or you can listen-on-the-go using on():

const tracker = new Tracker();

// Listen on `PRODUCT_CLICK`event.
tracker.on('PRODUCT_CLICK', (event, eventsHistory) =>
  console.log(event)
);

// Listen on all events
tracker.on('*', (event, eventsHistory) =>
  console.log(event)
);

Create Event listener

Event listner is a pure function with (event, eventsHistory) => tracking goes here.

It describes what to do with the just-fired event.

Why providing the eventsHistory as second parameter ?

=> because in some cases you'll need to apply some restrictions on some events E.g:

• Track product click only once!
• Track product click only if pageView is already tracked
• etc

Listen on one event

/**
 * Listener with eventType specified it will be called when the given eventType is dispatched
 */
function trackAddToCart(event, eventsHistory) {
    // Call DataLayer or your tracking provider (E.g. Pixel, GTM..)
    window.dataLayer.push(...event.data);

    // If you want save this event in the events history, just return it
    // otherwise it will be ignored.
    return event
}

// Allow `trackAddToCart` to listen only on `ADD_TO_CART` event
trackAddToCart.eventType = 'ADD_TO_CART';

Listen on all events

/**
 * Since no eventType was specified it will be called whenever an event dispatched
 * You can use `switch` statement to handle multiple events in one listener
 */
function trackCartEvents(event, eventsHistory) {
    switch(event.type) {
      case 'ADD_TO_CART':
        // Call DataLayer or your tracking provider (E.g. Pixel, GTM..)
        window.dataLayer.push(...event);
        break;

      default:
        // Silence
    }
}

Track Events

trackEvent is a function that accept an object describes the event as argument.

• Track event ADD_TO_CART_EVENT with data.

tracker.trackEvent({
  type: 'ADD_TO_CART_EVENT',
  data: {
    productId: '12345',
    quantity: 5
  }
})

• Track event PRODUCT_CLICK with no associated data.

tracker.trackEvent({ type: 'PRODUCT_CLICK' })

Usage with React

Provide tracker to the root component

All container components need access to the tracker so they can track events.

We will use the <TrackerProvider> to magically make the tracker available to all container components in the application without passing it explicitly.

You only need to use it once when you render the root component:

index.js

import React from 'react'
import { render } from 'react-dom'
import { TrackerProvider, Tracker } from 'react-tracker'
import { trackProductClick } from './tracking/listeners/cart'
import ProductsList from './components/ProductsList'

const tracker = new Tracker([trackProductClick])

render(
  <TrackerProvider tracker={tracker}>
    <ProductsList products={someProducts} />
  </TrackerProvider>,
  document.getElementById('root')
)

Create Add to Cart Event Listener .../tracking/listeners/cart.js

function trackAddToCart(event, eventsHistory) {
    window.dataLayer.push(...event);
    return event
}

// Allow `trackAddToCart` to listen only on `ADD_TO_CART` event
trackAddToCart.eventType = 'ADD_TO_CART';

export default trackAddToCart;

Add To Cart Event creator .../tracking/events/cart.js

Event creator should return an object that describe the event (Type and data).

• type: string (Required)
• data: Any (Optional)

function getAddToCartEvent(id, price) {
  return {
      type: 'ADD_TO_CART',
      data: {
          id: id,
          price: price
      }
  }
};

Create Product Component components/Product.js

import React from 'react'

const Product = ({ onClick, title, price, currency }) => (
  <li
    onClick={onClick}
  >
    {title}
    <span> {price} {currency} </span>
  </li>
)

export default Product

Create Products List Component components/ProductList.js

import Product from './Product'

const ProductList = ({ products, trackAddToCart }) => (
  <ul>
    {products.map(product => (
      <Product key={product.id} {...product} onClick={() => trackAddToCart(product.id, product.price)} />
    ))}
  </ul>
)

ProductList.propTypes = {
  // ...
  trackAddToCart: PropTypes.func
}

export default ProductList

Create mapTrackingToProps function and pass it to withTracking HOC .../compoenets/ProductListContainer.js

mapTrackingToProps should return an object which will be merged with the component Props.

import React from 'react';
import { withTracking } from 'react-tracker';
import { getAddToCartEvent } from '.../tracking/events/cart';
import ProductsList from './ProductsList';

const mapTrackingToProps = trackEvent => {
  return {
    trackAddToCart: (id, price) => {
      trackEvent(getAddToCartEvent(id, price))
    }
  }
}

// Finally, we create the `ProductsList` by calling `withTracking()` and passing our `mapTrackingToProps`
const ProductsListWithTracking = withTracking(mapTrackingToProps)(ProductsList)

export default ProductsListWithTracking

Create redux middleware for redux-based apps

If your app is using redux for state managment, you might want to track redux actions directly.

Let's create our Redux middleware to take the tracker as argument and call trackEvent on every redux action dispatched.

/**
 * Simple redux middleware to use redux actions as input of tracking!
 * this will call the track function from the provided instance of tracker on every action
 * and use the action type as the event type and the action payload as the event data
 * @param {Object} tracker 
 */
const trackingMiddleware = tracker => () => next => action => {
    tracker.trackEvent(action);
    next(action);
};

export default trackingMiddleware;

import { createStore, applyMiddleware } from 'redux';
import { Tracker } from 'react-redux';
import { trackingMiddleware, Tracker } from '../trackingMiddleware'

const tracker = new Tracker();

const store =  createStore(
  reducers,
  {}, // initialState
  applyMiddleware(trackingMiddleware(tracker))
);

// That's All ;)

Contribution

This project is in its early stages, I'd be very happy if you can help :)

License

MIT