data-analytics.js
data-analytics.js aims to simplify analytics tagging within a page, by
providing a means of specifying analytics data in purely declarative
data-analytics attributes, instead of requiring click handlers to be
written.
This also provides a level of abstraction, allowing data-analytics to
work on pages using either the ga.js or analytics.js code.
Usage
data-analytics attributes may contain one or more key=value fields, separated by semi-colons;
<!-- eg: -->
<a href="something" data-analytics="category=Things;action=Clicked;label=Something">
data-analytics.js recognizes the the fields category, action, label, and value for event tracking,
and domains for cross-domain visits.
Fields can be grouped in a single tag, or spread out in the DOM tree. This way instead of repeating some of the same fields over and over, fields can be inherited from ancestor elements in the DOM. A field can also be repeated in the DOM heirarchy, with the deeper element overriding the ancestor value.
<!-- eg: -->
<body data-analytics="category=Department of Funny Things">
⋮
<ul data-analytics="action=Viewed Photo">
<li><a href="cat.gif" data-analytics="label=Cat"><img src="cat-thumb.jpg" alt="Cat"></a></li>
<li><a href="dog.jpg" data-analytics="label=Dog"><img src="dog-thumb.jpg" alt="Dog"></a></li>
<li><a href="catsanddogs.pdf" data-analytics="action=Downloaded;label=catsanddogs.pdf">...</a></li>
For event tracking, when a link is clicked data-analytics.js submits the event data to be recorded if
at least category, action, and label are defined (or inherited) for that link.
Cross Domain Linking
For sharing analytics over muliple distinct domain names, give the
body tag on both sites a data-analytics attribute with a domains field.
This field is a space-separated list of those shared domains.
To also include subdomains, prefix the domain name with a dot.
Subdomains are automatically always included if using Universal
Analytics (analytics.js).
<!-- eg: -->
<body data-analytics="domains=.novascotia.ca .gov.ns.ca">
If using cross domain functionality, the Google Analytics
initialization code on the sites will need to set the
allowLinker parameter to true.
See the
analytics.js
or
ga.js
documentation for specifics about setting allowLinker.