Hi all,
I'm trying to keep track of some custom behaviour on our Facebook Canvas App. I need to send custom variables to Google Analytics but the fb:google-analytics tag is too limited.
Do you know a way of working around this?
I'm tracking the normal page view but I also need to track Ajax calls and custom variables.
Thanks, Diogo
Ok, based on Denis suggestion but considering the fact we can't completely switch our App to run as an iFrame, we fixed the problem using 'invisible' iFrames in the beginning of the page.
The code is very similar to this:
<?php
$variable = $_GET[ 'var' ];
$value = $_GET[ 'value' ];
$slot = array_key_exists( 'slot', $_GET ) ? $_GET[ 'slot' ] : 1;
$level = array_key_exists( 'level', $_GET ) ? $_GET[ 'level' ] : 3;
if ( empty( $variable ) || empty( $value ) )
{
$variable = 'BadRequest';
$value = '1';
$slot = 1;
$level = 3;
}
assert( 'is_string( $variable )' );
assert( 'is_numeric( $slot )' );
assert( 'is_numeric( $level )' );
$customParamStr = "'$slot', '$variable', '$value', '$level'";
?>
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Analytics Frame</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<script type="text/javascript">
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXXXX-X']);
_gaq.push(['_setCustomVar', <?php echo $customParamStr ?>]);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script');
ga.type = 'text/javascript';
ga.async = true;
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
And to use it, we add this iFrame to a canvas page using:
<iframe class="analyticsFrame" id="analyticsCode"
src="???/analyticsFrame.php?var=varname&value=valuename&slot=1&level=3" ?>" width="0px" height="0px" />
We still have to improve the code, for example, we could add support for multiple variables in the same iFrame...
I hope this helps someone and I hope we'll be able to switch totally to iFrame very soon :)
p.s. You can use this technique to run pretty much any javascript but keep in mind that, if you need it a lot, you should project switch completely to iFrame right now :)
Thanks for your help once more :)
Cheers, Diogo