Adding Google Analytics to an app

Question

I want to implement this new method of Google Analytics, I want to conditinally insert this code in the head section conditionally in production mode only, any suggestion to how to do this?

http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/asyncTracking.html

Answer 1

Google Analytics and Rails in 5 EASY Steps:

If you are in Rails 3, I just found a great solution for doing Google Analytics in Rails apps.

(1) In your Gemfile:

group :production do
  gem 'rack-google_analytics', :require => "rack/google_analytics"
end

(2) Bundle Install

(3) In your config/application.rb (put this in the class definition section - careful not to drop it in a module. I put mine right under "class Application"):

if Rails.env == "production"
  config.middleware.use("Rack::GoogleAnalytics", :web_property_id => "UA-0000000-1")
end

(4) Initiate your Google Analytics account

(5) Copy and paste that funky web_property_id from Google's supplied code into the code from (3), replacing 'UA-000000-1'

That's it!

I originally found this solution here: David Bock Article

Answer 2

I know this is already answered, but I spent quite a bit of time based on an answer above which seems to be outdated. So I am posting what I did to get Google Analytics working with my Rails 3.0 app.

1) Add the following in your Gemfile

group :production do  
  gem 'rack-google-analytics', :require => 'rack/google-analytics'  
end  

Note that it is rack-google-analytics and NOT rack-google_analytics. Ditto with the require part

2) In your config/environments/production.rb file, add the following snippet (replacing the dummy tracker with the google analytics tracker for your website).

config.gem 'rack-google-analytics', :lib => 'rack/google-analytics'
config.middleware.use Rack::GoogleAnalytics, :tracker => 'UA-XXXXXXXX-X'

3) Run bundle install and start the rails server
4) Sit back and see the analytics flowing in!

Check out https://github.com/leehambley/rack-google-analytics/blob/master/README.md for instructions on how to make it work with sinatra, padrino etc.

Also, the latest copy of the gem uses :async option to use asynchronous tracker. The default is true, so you won't need to use this option unless you want to suppress async for some strange reason!