Gabba: A Ruby Gem For Doing Server Side Google Analytics Tracking

Yo, Gabba! Gabba, hey? Gabba is a Ruby gem to do easy server-side Google Analytics tracking of page view and custom events. Gather around and I'll show you how it works.

Google Analytics is the gold standard of website traffic reporting. In addition to tracking page views, one of the interesting capabilities it has is to track custom events. These could be shopping cart checkouts or video plays from clicking on a button in a Flash player.

The way that Google Analytics is implemented is using the typical tracking image technique. An image is fetched from the server, and based on the infomation pased with this request, the information about the visit is tracked. One twist on this is that Google Analytics generates the tag for the "traxel" using a piece of asynchronous JavaScript. This means that clients without javascript are not able to use Google Analytics to track visitor metrics... or does it?

There is another lesser-known way to integrate that can generate the needed info entirely on the server. This is normally used to handle older mobile browsers that do not have JavaScript implementations. Since all you are doing is fetching a 1x1 pixel GIF image, all you really need is the magic URL.

This is in fact exactly what you would need to do if you want to track custom events, the only real difference being the specific parameters passed to Google Analytics.

There are a number of cases where you might want to track custom events for non-browser devices or other unique situations. Tracking when a purchase is completed, or when a video is played by Flash player or a phone call is initiated, are just a few things you might want to track entirely on the server, with no browser interaction at all.

I did a bit of searching, but did not find any Ruby library that did what I needed. You know what that means! Fire up the editor, I'm going in! And that is how the gabba gem was born.

It is very easy to use:

# track page views
Gabba::Gabba.new("UT-1234", "mydomain.com").page_view("something", "track/me")

# or track custom events
Gabba::Gabba.new("UT-1234", "mydomain.com").event("Videos", "Play", "ID", "123")

That is all there is to using it. Simple way to get server side Google Analytics tracking of page view and custom events. Fork gabba on github, or just "gem install gabba" and start tracking all your fun stuff.

10 Cool Things From RubyConf X

This last week was the fantastic RubyConf X. It has been ten years of RubyConf and in celebration of this notable occasion, the organizers located it in New Orleans and opened up the registration to a lot more people then most years past. This had the clearly foreseeable consequence of turning the conference into a really fun time!

So here, in no particular order, are 10 cool things I saw or heard at the conference.

1. Rite

During Matz's keynote he introduced "Rite" which is a embedded version of Ruby designed to run on devices such as digital TVs, and other neat small gadgets. It will have a different implementation that the CRuby implementation, optimized for the smaller lower powered profile of the next generation gadgets. The project is sponsored by the Japanese government and is already being used in development by a major game company that could not be named but is will known. My palms started sweating the minute I heard about it, and I am already getting excited about the prospect of flying_robot 2.0 based on Rite.

2. Evergreen w/CoffeeScript

CJ Kihlbom and Jonas Nicklas gave an excellent overview of client-side UI testing. They also demoed their own highly useful Evergreen testing framework which works together with Ruby and Jasmine looks like a very succinct and useful approach toward browser testing. Writing specs in CoffeeScript looks very tasty.

3. Gentlemanly Git Tricks

Scott Chacon's talks on git always leave me feeling knowing both more than I did, and less then I thought I did, at the same time. This session also had a hilarious and yet useful section on 'how to be a gentleman' including tips on whiskey, how to dress, how to tip, and how to treat a lady. Keeping it classy, Scott!

4. "F-Bombs, Zeds, _whys and a Missing Brain Area"

The keynote speeches from Dave Thomas, David Heinemeier Hansson and Matz could not have been more different on the surface, and yet had a similar theme: defy the limitations of the status quo, and seek out new ideas that are actually better. Dave's admonishment of the community to get over our gender bias, David's F-bombs, weed photos, and cry of "Freedom!", and Matz's love of diversity from _why to Zed, and adopting of David's amusing yet appropriate term "freedom-patching" in lieu of the less pleasant-sounding "monkeypatching" were all different ways of showing our desire as a community to seek out these truths. As long as we keep talking to each other, and also listening with an open mind.

5. Ruby 1.9.2 is Ready

Several people have been saying it, I am been using it from some testing, and Jim Wierich said it in the 'hallway track': Ruby 1.9.2 is ready for prime-time. If you are not transitioning your apps to 1.9.2 you should be. Performance, and cool tools like minitest are just two reasons to do it today.

6. Beyond The Code

Paul Campbell, Joe O'Brian, Keavy McMinn, Jon Dahl, Tom Preston-Werner and several other interesting developers spoke about more than just programming. Hacking business, art, music, and code, are all just aspects of hacking. RubyConf is a great place to find out not just about Ruby code, but the motivations and inspiration behind people we respect, and look to to improve ourselves.

7. Lightning Talks

The number of people that are eager to signup for a lightning talk was huge at RubyConf, as always greatly exceeding the available time. Even trimming down each to 4 minutes, there was only time to get thru relatively few, and I was lucky to get to speak about the Ticketmaster gem.

8. Kid Programmer Mini-Conf

Sarah Allen, Sarah Mei, Jim Meyer (who sadly could not make the conference at the last minute), Liah Hansen put together a parallel kids programming track, for the first time ever at RubyConf. The idea was brilliant, and I hope to bring my own son next year to participate.

UPDATE: Sarah Mei informs me that Maxwell Salzberg is also an organizer of the kids track. My bad!

9. Hallway Track

As always, the conversations at RubyConf are amazing. The people who attend are doing amazing things, and the change to hang out for a few days talking is a fantastic chance to learn and find out incredibly useful and interesting things. You have to actually attend RubyConf to experience this, you just cannot get it by watching the videos.

10. Music

From the live music in New Orleans, to the DJs, it is really great to have been in a city where music is something living, vibrant, and cherished. Getting to do my music/brain hacking talk on "How To Jam In Code" was just the icing on the cake for me in the city of Jazz. Getting to create a bio-computer made of living people is a special privilege, thank you very much to everyone who participated.

But most of all, thank you very much to Kelly Fowler, Chad Fowler, Rich Kilmer, and David Black for doing so very much for all of us. It is a lot of hard work, and we all appreciate it!

RubyConf X was a tremendous affirmation of the strength and depth of sharing within the Ruby community. I look forward to seeing what the next ten years have in store for us.