Go Analytics

A lightweight, privacy-focused web analytics backend service built with Go. This project provides a simple yet powerful alternative to traditional analytics platforms, allowing you to track user sessions, page views, and custom events while maintaining user privacy through anonymous tracking.

Overview

Go Analytics is a self-hosted analytics solution designed to give you full control over your data. It features a RESTful API backend that can be easily integrated into any web application, with support for session tracking, page view monitoring, and custom event logging.

Key Features

• Privacy-Focused Anonymous Tracking: Generates daily-rotating anonymous IDs using IP and user agent hashing
• Session Management: Comprehensive session tracking with geolocation, device, and browser information
• Page View Analytics: Track page visits with time-on-page metrics and navigation flow
• Custom Event Logging: Flexible event system for tracking any custom interactions
• IP Geolocation: Automatic location detection (country, region, city) for visitor insights
• PostgreSQL Storage: Reliable and scalable data persistence
• RESTful API: Clean, well-documented endpoints for easy integration
• Vercel Deployment Ready: Configured for serverless deployment on Vercel
• Docker Support: Includes Docker Compose setup for local development

Technology Stack

• Backend: Go 1.22.5
• Web Framework: Gin (high-performance HTTP framework)
• Database: PostgreSQL
• Deployment: Vercel (serverless), Docker
• Libraries:
  • gin-gonic/gin - HTTP web framework
  • lib/pq - PostgreSQL driver
  • rs/cors - CORS middleware

API Endpoints

Session Tracking

• POST /api/session - Record a new user session with page views
• GET /api/sessions - Retrieve session data (supports ?distinct=true for unique visitors)

Event Tracking

• POST /api/event - Log a custom event with arbitrary data
• GET /api/events - Retrieve events within a time range

Analytics Data

• GET /api/pageviews - Get page view statistics with optional time filters

Database Schema

The service automatically creates three main tables:

• sessions: Stores user session information including anonymous IDs, timestamps, geolocation, and device data
• page_views: Records individual page visits with time spent and navigation order
• events: Captures custom events with flexible JSON data storage

Getting Started

Local Development with Docker

# Start PostgreSQL database
docker-compose up -d

# Run the application
go run cmd/main.go

Deployment to Vercel

The project is configured for Vercel serverless deployment with environment variables for PostgreSQL connection.

Use Cases

• Track website visitor behavior without invasive cookies
• Monitor user flows through your application
• Analyze content engagement with time-on-page metrics
• Log custom business events (button clicks, form submissions, etc.)
• Generate insights about your audience's location and devices

Future Roadmap

See TODO.md for planned features including:

• NPM package for easy frontend integration
• Analytics dashboard with Laravel
• Multi-tenant support with API key authentication

License

This project is open source and available for personal and commercial use.