🔥 Visit and event tracking for JavaScript
- Easily track unique visitors
- Track events across page navigation
Use it with any backend. For Rails, check out the Ahoy gem.
Download ahoy.js and include it on your page.
<script src="ahoy.js"></script>
Or use Yarn:
yarn add ahoy.js
And import it with:
import ahoy from 'ahoy.js';
When someone lands on your website, they are assigned a visit token and a visitor token.
The visit token expires after 4 hours, in which a new visit is created. Visits are useful for tracking metrics like monthly active users. The visitor token expires after 2 years. A POST
request is sent to /ahoy/visits
with:
- visit_token
- visitor_token
- referrer
- landing_page
The server can capture:
- ip
- user_agent
- user - from app authentication
And calculate things like:
- referring_domain and search_keyword from referrer
- utm_source, utm_medium, utm_term, utm_content, and utm_campaign from landing_page
- city, region, and country from ip
- browser, os, and device_type from user_agent
Track events with:
ahoy.track(name, properties);
A POST
request is sent to /ahoy/events
with:
- name
- properties
- time
The server can capture:
- visit_token - from cookies
- user - from app authentication
As a precaution, the server should reject times that do not match:
1 minute ago < time <= now
Track all views and clicks with:
ahoy.trackAll();
Set the page with:
ahoy.configure({page: "Landing page"});
And sections with:
<div data-section="Header">
<a href="/home">Home</a>
</div>
These are included in event properties if set.
ahoy.trackView();
Name - $view
Properties
- url -
https://www.streamflip.com
- title -
Streamflip
ahoy.trackClicks();
Name - $click
Properties
- tag -
a
- id -
account-link
- class -
btn btn-primary
- text -
View Account
- href -
/account
ahoy.trackSubmits();
Name - $submit
ahoy.trackChanges();
Name - $change
Ahoy is built with developers in mind. You can run the following code in your browser’s console.
Force a new visit
ahoy.reset(); // then reload the page
Log messages
ahoy.debug();
Turn off logging
ahoy.debug(false);
Here’s the default configuration:
ahoy.configure({
urlPrefix: "",
visitsUrl: "/ahoy/visits",
eventsUrl: "/ahoy/events",
page: null,
platform: "Web",
useBeacon: true,
startOnReady: true,
trackVisits: true,
cookies: true,
cookieDomain: null,
headers: {},
visitParams: {},
withCredentials: false
});
When trackVisits
is set to false
, Ahoy.js will not attempt to create a visit
on the server, but assumes that the server itself will return visit and visitor
cookies.
To track visits across multiple subdomains, use:
ahoy.configure({cookieDomain: "yourdomain.com"});
Ahoy automatically associates users with visits and events if the user is authenticated on the server.
If you use cookies for authentication and the JavaScript library is on the same subdomain as the server, no additional configuration is needed.
If you use cookies and the JavaScript library is on a different domain or subdomain as the server, set:
ahoy.configure({withCredentials: true});
This will send credentials such as cookies, authorization headers or TLS client certificates to the server.
If you use headers for authentication, pass them with:
ahoy.configure({headers: {"Authorization": "Bearer ..."}});
If you use the Fetch API to make requests and the JavaScript library is on a different domain or subdomain as the server, Ahoy cookies are not sent to the server by default. You can pass the info in headers with:
fetch(url, {
headers: {"Ahoy-Visit": ahoy.getVisitId(), "Ahoy-Visitor": ahoy.getVisitorId()}
});
git clone https://github.com/ankane/ahoy.js.git
cd ahoy.js
yarn install
yarn build
- Send events in batches
- Add page and section for automatic events
- Add
trackContent
method
View the changelog
Everyone is encouraged to help improve this project. Here are a few ways you can help:
- Report bugs
- Fix bugs and submit pull requests
- Write, clarify, or fix documentation
- Suggest or add new features
To get started with development:
git clone https://github.com/ankane/ahoy.js.git
cd ahoy.js
yarn install
yarn build