Enhanced Google Analytics 4 Integration and Ecommerce Tracking Improvements

[empiricompany]

Description (*)

Improve Google Analytics 4 integration and ecommerce tracking
PS: Apologies for not splitting into single issues/PRs for better comparison/readability. I've had to refactor multiple parts and am short on time.

New Features

• add debug mode to view real time events in analytics (only for developer ip)
• add user_id tracking

Fixed Issues

• follow guidelines for item_* props names from GA4 Events Reference
• remove unnecessary generic item_list_name
• fix begin_checkout events firing twice on order success page
• add index position in view_item_list
• added product category and removed some unecessary generics
• fix missing price value for some events
• fix missing sku value if is not set as "used_in_product_listing"
• wrap tracking in its own function like Universal Analytics
• add support for firecheckout to event purchase

Manual testing scenarios (*)

1. Set Analytics 4 mode and measurement ID
2. Enable debug mode and view real-time events in GA4; events are also written in googleanalytics4.log (add your IP as a developer)
3. Enable user_id tracking, log in to frontend, and verify that it is set correctly with customer_id

Questions or comments

• Is it safe and in compliance with GA4 guidelines to send a customer ID as user_id?
• If the manufacturer attribute is not set to "used_in_product_listing", the value is empty. We haven't fixed this for performance reasons, but maybe we can add some info like "To track item_brand, set the manufacturer to 'used_in_product_listing'"?
• For the manufacturer, we can add a configuration to select another attribute
• For performance reasons, we've added the category only if it's "ready" without other loaders

We have tested it at some production sites, and it's working correctly for us as is.

[fballiano]

rebasing on main doesn't work but we've to do it :-)

PS: thanks for this great new additions!

[empiricompany]

someone is a ga4 expert? seems we can't get products revenue by categories, always show category "others" in explore reports or in looker studio, maybe we have to pass the item_category in the purchase events. we have skipped adding it like in universal for performance reason and because we thought that ga4 was able to aggregate the data with item_view and item_view_list where we pass item_category, i dont know if is one of millions of bugs affected by ga4 or it's normal, but if is an important data i can add it. in the future we want to implement caching for item_view and item_view_list events and include all data like item_category1-2-3-4 and manufacturer (if not is used_in_product_listing)

[empiricompany]

someone is a ga4 expert? seems we can't get products revenue by categories, always show category "others" in explore reports or in looker studio, maybe we have to pass the item_category in the purchase events. we have skipped adding it like in universal for performance reason and because we thought that ga4 was able to aggregate the data with item_view and item_view_list where we pass item_category, i dont know if is one of millions of bugs affected by ga4 or it's normal, but if is an important data i can add it. in the future we want to implement caching for item_view and item_view_list events and include all data like item_category1-2-3-4 and manufacturer (if not is used_in_product_listing)

also because item_category can be ambiguous, if the product is assigned to multiple categories

[empiricompany]

someone is a ga4 expert? seems we can't get products revenue by categories, always show category "others" in explore reports or in looker studio, maybe we have to pass the item_category in the purchase events. we have skipped adding it like in universal for performance reason and because we thought that ga4 was able to aggregate the data with item_view and item_view_list where we pass item_category, i dont know if is one of millions of bugs affected by ga4 or it's normal, but if is an important data i can add it. in the future we want to implement caching for item_view and item_view_list events and include all data like item_category1-2-3-4 and manufacturer (if not is used_in_product_listing)

also because item_category can be ambiguous, if the product is assigned to multiple categories

To have statistics for each event without aggregating data through BigQuery, it is necessary to pass item_category. So, I have implemented it.

[fballiano]

we have 1green + 2gray, I'd merge if there's nothing more to change

[fballiano]

nice! I think we're ready for rc5!

[iamniels]

NOTICE: PHP message: PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to a member function getLimit() on bool in app/code/core/Mage/GoogleAnalytics/Block/Ga.php:273

$toolbarBlock = Mage::app()->getLayout()->getBlock('product_list_toolbar');
$pageSize = $toolbarBlock->getLimit();

[empiricompany]

/app/code/core/Mage/GoogleAnalytics/Block/Ga.php:273 contains this line

$result[] = "gtag('event', 'remove_from_cart', " . json_encode($eventData, JSON_THROW_ON_ERROR) . ");";

Please open a separate issue with a detailed information.

[fballiano]

it's probably from the rc5 version but it's impossible to understand

[discountscott]

NOTICE: PHP message: PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to a member function getLimit() on bool in app/code/core/Mage/GoogleAnalytics/Block/Ga.php:273

$toolbarBlock = Mage::app()->getLayout()->getBlock('product_list_toolbar');

$pageSize = $toolbarBlock->getLimit();

If you create a new issue for this, tag me on it. Would like a bit more information about the scenario when you received the logged error.