4.0.0

Attention: this is a major release with breaking changes.

Upgrade note — the false "not known" sentinel is gone. Tracker 3.x let you pass false to many optional arguments to mean "value not known" (e.g. doTrackEvent($cat, $act, $name, false), addEcommerceItem($sku, $name, $cat, false), setLatitude(false)). Those arguments are now typed (?T or numeric unions). If your calling code does not use declare(strict_types=1) — the usual case for a drop-in tracker — PHP's weak-mode coercion silently turns false into 0 / 0.0 / '' instead of raising an error, so such calls now send a value (e_v=0, lat=0, item price 0) where 3.x omitted the parameter. Replace every false "not known" argument with null or simply omit it; passing false no longer means "unset".

Removed

• Support for PHP versions lower than 8.1. The tracker now requires PHP 8.1 or newer.
• The #[AllowDynamicProperties] attribute. All properties are now declared explicitly, so setting undeclared dynamic properties on a tracker instance is no longer supported (extend MatomoTracker and declare the property instead).

Changed

• declare(strict_types=1) is now enabled and every method has proper parameter and return type hints aligned with how Matomo core handles the corresponding tracking parameters. Passing a value whose type cannot be coerced now throws a TypeError (for example a non-numeric string for a numeric parameter, or any type mismatch when the calling code itself declares strict_types=1). Note that for ordinary (non-strict) callers PHP's weak-mode coercion still applies, so e.g. false becomes 0/'' rather than raising — see the upgrade note above about the removed false sentinel.
• Optional "unset" parameters and their corresponding properties and getters now use null instead of the previous false sentinel. For example getUserId(), getUserAgent(), getIp() and getPageviewId() now return null (not false) when no value is set, and doTrackEvent()/getUrlTrackEvent() default the event name and value to null.
• All public properties are now natively typed. Assigning a legacy sentinel value such as false to e.g. $tracker->userAgent now throws a TypeError; the attributionInfo property defaults to an empty array instead of false. Subclasses overriding methods with the old untyped signatures may need to be updated to the new signatures.
• setUserId() now accepts null to de-assign a previously set User ID, as the method documentation always promised (previously the string type hint made that impossible).
• setUrlReferrer() (and the deprecated setUrlReferer()) accept null to unset the referrer.
• setCustomTrackingParameter() accepts an array value again (serialized via http_build_query, as the JS tracker does); this restores the pre-3.4.0 behavior for multi-value parameters.
• setLatitude() / setLongitude() values of 0.0 (equator / prime meridian) are now sent to Matomo. Previously coordinates of exactly zero were silently dropped.
• Goal and Ecommerce revenue amounts now distinguish "not set" from an explicit 0. doTrackGoal() / getUrlTrackGoal() (and the Matomo_/Piwik_ goal helpers) take ?float $revenue = null: null omits revenue (so Matomo uses the goal's configured revenue) while 0.0 now sends revenue=0. Likewise the optional Ecommerce amounts ($subTotal, $tax, $shipping, $discount of doTrackEcommerceOrder() etc.) are ?float = null and only sent when provided, and the required Ecommerce grand total is now always sent (a 0.0 order/cart sends revenue=0). Previously an explicit 0/0.0 was silently omitted for all of these.
• The do* tracking methods now declare a string|bool return type. In bulk mode they return boolean true (previously the value was coerced to the string "1").
• doTrackSiteSearch() / getUrlTrackSiteSearch() accept ?int $countResults and only send &search_count when a count is provided (previously &search_count=0 was always sent).
• Both transports now consistently throw a RuntimeException on request failure (DNS, connection or timeout errors) by default; previously only the cURL transport threw while the stream fallback silently returned false. Call setExceptionsEnabled(false) to make failed requests return false instead, so tracking never breaks the calling application (#105).
• Lowered the default request timeouts from 600s/300s to 5s/2s so a slow or unreachable Matomo can no longer block the calling page for minutes (#88). Raise them again via setRequestTimeout() / setRequestConnectTimeout() if needed.
• Bumped the test suite to PHPUnit 10.5.

Fixed

• All tracking parameter names and values are now consistently URL-encoded (including _refts, data/customData, cs/charset and the download/link action type passed to getUrlTrackAction()/doTrackAction()), and the visitor ID read from the first-party cookie is validated as a 16-character hexadecimal string.
• Request-failure exceptions no longer include the full request URL (only the target host), so its query string is never surfaced in error messages/logs. The request URL and body are also marked #[\SensitiveParameter] so they are redacted from exception stack traces.
• Authenticated requests that carry token_auth in the request body are now sent as POST; previously the stream transport sent them as GET, so Matomo ignored the token in the body.
• The stream transport now returns the response body for HTTP 4xx/5xx responses (like cURL) instead of turning them into a failure.
• Bulk tracking uses a more generous request timeout (at least 30s) and no longer discards the queued actions when a batch fails to send, so the batch can be retried.
• Outgoing tracker cookies are now joined with ; (not &), and all incoming Set-Cookie response headers are parsed instead of only the last one; getIncomingTrackerCookie() returns string|false.
• setAttributionInfo() no longer includes the supplied payload in its exception message (the parameter is also marked #[\SensitiveParameter]).
• Event and content tracking requests now send &ca=1 (custom action), so Matomo no longer falls back to recording them as page views if the handling plugin is disabled (#80).
• The cip (override IP) tracking parameter is now URL-encoded like every other value (#151).
• No longer calls the deprecated curl_close() (it was already a no-op on the supported PHP versions) (#149).
• Auto-detection of the tracked page URL now uses REQUEST_URI as the source instead of PATH_INFO. With front-controller / path-info routing (e.g. /dir1/page handled by dir1/index.php), PATH_INFO only holds the trailing /page, so the tracker previously recorded a truncated URL; it now records the full requested path. PATH_INFO is no longer used at all (SCRIPT_NAME remains the fallback when REQUEST_URI is unavailable) (#141).

Added

• Detect Google-GeminiNotebook as an AI bot by @eldk in #153
• Add method to track an AI bot request, if the current user agent is a known AI bot by @diosmosis in #148
• PHPStan static analysis at max level (phpstan.neon.dist) and the Matomo coding standard via PHP_CodeSniffer (phpcs.xml.dist), both enforced for every pull request through GitHub Actions.
• A greatly expanded unit test suite covering all tracking parameters, cookie handling and request preparation.
• setDebugTrackingParameter() (@internal test helper) to append a raw, unvalidated tracking parameter that overrides any built-in parameter of the same name, so integration tests can verify server-side handling of malformed values.
• setCurlOptions(array) to pass additional cURL options (e.g. CURLOPT_IPRESOLVE, CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION) for the tracking requests; they are applied after the built-in options (#92). Custom CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER entries are merged with the tracker's own headers rather than replacing them, so adding a header no longer drops the built-in Content-Type (which would otherwise break bulk requests).

New Contributors

• @eldk made their first contribution in #153

Full Changelog: 3.4.0...4.0.0