Use Google Analytics to track usage of PHP API [closed]

Question

I have an API on my webserver that accesses the data in the website's database. I am trying to figure out how to use google analytics to track the API usage. The clients accessing the API response will not be able to execute javascript.

I have tried https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/other/mobileWebsites to do server side, but since MY API cannot open any images, it will not work. Any Idea out there?

API example is http://www.serviidb.com/api/video .

Answer 1

If you have updated to Universal Analytics (the new Google Analytics) you can generate events or pageviews directly from PHP.

Google has created the Measurement protocol that is basically a set of http requests with some parameters contatining what you want to track. I will paste here the code I use in my own site to track downloads.

To track anything you just have to call AnalyticsDoHit() with your own parameters:

// Create a page view directly from PHP. No javascript.
function AnalyticsDoHit($tid, $slug, $title)
{
// Standard params
$v   = 1;
$cid = ParseOrCreateAnalyticsCookie();

// Send PageView hit
$data = array(
    'v' => $v,
    'tid' => $tid,
    'cid' => $cid,
    't' => 'pageview',
    'dt' => $title,
    'dp' => $slug
);

$getString = 'https://ssl.google-analytics.com/collect';
$getString .= '?payload_data&';
$getString .= http_build_query($data);
file_get_contents($getString); // do the https request
}


// Gets the current Analytics session identifier or create a new one
// if it does not exist
function ParseOrCreateAnalyticsCookie()
{
if (isset($_COOKIE['_ga']))
    {
    // An analytics cookie is found
    list($version, $domainDepth, $cid1, $cid2) = preg_split('[\.]', $_COOKIE["_ga"], 4);
    $contents = array(
        'version' => $version,
        'domainDepth' => $domainDepth,
        'cid' => $cid1 . '.' . $cid2
    );
    $cid      = $contents['cid'];
    }
else
    {
    // no analytics cookie is found. Create a new one
    $cid1 = mt_rand(0, 2147483647);
    $cid2 = mt_rand(0, 2147483647);

    $cid = $cid1 . '.' . $cid2;
    setcookie('_ga', 'GA1.2.' . $cid, time() + 60 * 60 * 24 * 365 * 2, '/');
    }
return $cid;
}

Use it as follows:

AnalyticsDoHit("UA-XXXXXX-X", "http://www.AutomatedEmailParser.com/EmailAndParser_setup.msi", "EmailAndParser_setup.msi");