Simple-google-analytics NPM

Warning

This package was renamed to node-simple-ga. Please use that one.

Simple Google Analytics client for NodeJs

A simple to use NodeJs package for the Google Analytics Reporting API. This is still very much work in progress so please check back.

Down to business

It should be much easier to retrieve data from the Google Analytics API and this package helps you achieve that. Focus on analyzing the data let it handle the rest.

Getting the top 10 links is as simple as this:

var analytics = new SimpleGA("./key.json");

var request = (new Request())
	.view(12345678)
	.results(10)
	.dimension("pagePath")
	.metric("pageviews")
	.orderDesc("pageviews");
	
var data = await analytics.run(request);

By default, data will be returned as an array of objects in the format below. For the top 10 list the result would look similar to this:

[
	{
		dimensions: {
			pagePath: "/"
		},
		metrics: {
			pageviews: 123
		}
	},
	...
]

It's that simple!

What it really is

node-simple-ga helps you create and make Reporting API v4 compliant JSON requests in a function-oriented manner, parse the response, and paginate additional requests if requested by the user. Further improvements will be focused on creating requests in a more robust and efficient way.

What it won't be

This package is not and will not be a data processing package. Data processing is left up to you - the developer.

Installation

To use the package, run:

npm i node-simple-ga

Before using the package, you must create and set up a Service Account. You can also watch a video tutorial on how to set up a Service account. While the title says it's a PHP tutorial, it doesn't really matter because you won't be using PHP anyway. Focus on the account creation and granting read access to the service account.

Usage

Typical usage for the script follows the following script: 1) Require node-simple-ga 2) Initialize the analytics package by providing a valid service account key (see Installation) 3) Create a request object 4) Add criteria to the request object 5) Create dimension and metric filters 6) Add filters to the request 7) Run the request

Optionally: 1) Clone the request object 2) Make changes to the request object 3) Run the request

Example #1

Task

Return all pages of two views XXXXXXXX and YYYYYYYY who don't have at least 100 pageviews,
Show page urls, pageviews and metrics,
Make sure page url doesn't contain /archive/,
Load only those entries that came from the US,
Sort results by the amount of users in a descending order

const {
	SimpleGA,
	Request,
	MetricFilter,
	DimensionFilter
} = require("node-simple-ga");

(async function() {
	var analytics = new SimpleGA("./key.json");

	var request1 = (new Request())
		.view(XXXXXXXX)
		.results(10)
		.dimension("pagePath")
		.metrics(["pageviews","users"])
		.orderDesc("users");

	var pagePathFilter = (new DimensionFilter())
		.dimension("pagePath")
		.contains("/archive/")
		.not();
	
	var countryFilter = (new DimensionFilter())
		.dimension("country")
		.matches("US");

	request.dimensionFilters(pagePathFilter,countryFilter);

	var pageviewsFilter = (new MetricFilter())
		.metric("pageviews")
		.lessThanEqualTo(100);

	request.metricFilter(pageviewsFilter);

	var request2 = request1.clone().view(YYYYYYYY);

	try {
		var {data1, data2} = await Promise.all([
			analytics.run(request1),
			analytics.run(request2)
		]);
	} catch (err) {
		console.error(err);
	}
})();

Since it's not possible to use negative lookups in Google Analytics (e.g. urls that don't contain something), you must first look up all urls with the thing you want to avoid and then negate the operation (in this case with .not(), but it's also possible with .inverse())

Please note that if you don't specify a date, only the last 7 days, excluding today, will be processed.