Table of Contents

• [What is Mixpanel] (#what-is-mixpanel)
• [What does this Gem do?] (#what-does-this-gem-do)
• [Install] (#install)
  • [Rack Middleware] (#rack-middleware)
• [Usage] (#usage)
  • [Initialize Mixpanel] (#initialize-mixpanel)
    • Track Events Directly
    • Pixel Based Event Tracking
    • Import Events
    • Set Person Attributes Directly
    • Increment Person Attributes Directly
• [Examples] (#examples)
• [How to use it from Rails controllers] (#how-to-use-it-from-rails-controllers)
• [How to track events using Resque and Rails] (#how-to-track-events-using-resque-and-rails)
• [Supported Platforms] (#supported-platforms)
• [Deprecation Notes] (#deprecation-notes)
• [Collaborators and Maintainers] (#collaborators-and-maintainers)

What is Mixpanel

Mixpanel is a real-time analytics service that helps companies understand how users interact with web applications. http://mixpanel.com

What does this Gem do?

• Track events with properties directly from your backend
• Track events with properties through JavaScript using a Rack Middleware
• Set / increment user attributes directly from your backend
• Set / increment user attributes through JavaScript using a Rack Middleware

Install

  gem install mixpanel

Rack Middleware

Only needed if you want to track events via Javascript. This setup will allow your backend to have the client browser process the actual requests over JavaScript rather than sending the request yourself.

If you are using Rails you can add this to your specific environment configuration file (located in config/environments/) or create a new initializer for it:

  config.middleware.use "Mixpanel::Middleware", "YOUR_MIXPANEL_API_TOKEN", options

Where options is a hash that accepts the following keys:

• insert_js_last : boolean

  Default: false

  By default the scripts are inserted into the head of the HTML response. If you'd prefer the scripts to run after all rendering has completed, set the insert_js_last flag to true and they'll be added at the end of the body tag. This will work whether or not you opt for the aynchronous version of the API. However, this will have no effect when inserting JS into an AJAX response.

• persist : boolean

  Default: false

  If you would like, the Mixpanel gem may be configured to store its queue in a Rack session. This allows events to be stored through redirects, which can be helpful if you sign in and redirect but want to associate an event with that action. The Mixpanel gem will also remove duplicate events from your queue for information that should only be transmitted to the API once, such as mixpanel.identify, mixpanel.name_tag, mixpanel.people.set, and mixpanel.register.

  This allows you to use a before_filter to set these variables, redirect, and still have them only transmitted once.

  To enable persistence, you must set the flag twice: here when instantiating Middleware and again when you initialize the Mixpanel class.

• config : hash

  Default: {}

  You can also pass additional Mixpanel configuration details.

Usage

Initialize Mixpanel

  @mixpanel = Mixpanel::Tracker.new YOUR_MIXPANEL_API_TOKEN, options

Where options is a hash that accepts the following keys:

• async : boolean

  Default: false

  Built in async feature. Events are sent to a subprocess via a pipe and the sub process asynchronously send events to Mixpanel. This value can be overwritten on subsequent method calls. I.e., this setting represents the default for your Mixpanel object, but each call can overwrite this default setting.

  This process uses a single thread to upload events, and may start dropping events if your application generates them at a very high rate. While this is a simple way to have asynchronous interaction with Mixpanel, more robust solutions are available. Specifically, see the Resque example below.

• persist : boolean

  Default: false

  This is used in connection with the Rack Middleware section above. If you are not going to use Middleware to send requests to Mixpanel through JavaScript, you don't need to worry about this option.

  If you would like, the Mixpanel gem may be configured to store its queue in a Rack session. This allows events to be stored through redirects, which can be helpful if you sign in and redirect but want to associate an event with that action. The Mixpanel gem will also remove duplicate events from your queue for information that should only be transmitted to the API once, such as mixpanel.identify, mixpanel.name_tag, mixpanel.people.set, and mixpanel.register.

  This allows you to use a before_filter to set these variables, redirect, and still have them only transmitted once.

  To enable persistence, you must set the flag twice: here when instantiating Middleware and again when you initialize the Mixpanel class.

• api_key : string

  Default: nil

  When using the import functionality, you must set an API key to go along with your token. If not set when the class is instantiated, you will be required to send the api key in the options hash of the import method.

• env : hash

  Default: {}

  This is used by the gem to append information from your request environment to your Mixpanel request. If you are calling this directly from a controller, simply passing in request.env will be sufficient. However, as explained in the Resque example, your environment might choke if it tries to convert that hash to JSON (not to mention how large that hash can be). You can just pass in a subset of the full environment:

    env = {
      'REMOTE_ADDR' => request.env['REMOTE_ADDR'],
      'HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR' => request.env['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'],
      'rack.session' => request.env['rack.session'],
      'mixpanel_events' => request.env['mixpanel_events']
    }
  
    @mixpanel = Mixpanel::Tracker.new MIXPANEL_TOKEN, { :env => env }

  Basically, this information is being used to: set the default IP address associated with the request, and grab any session variables needed to run the Middleware stuff.

  Additional information contained in your environment (e.g., http_referer) can simply be sent in as attributes where appropriate for your use case.

Track Events Directly

  @mixpanel.track event_name, properties, options

event_name is a string denoting how you want this event to appear in your Mixpanel dashboard.

properties is a hash of properties to be associated with the event. The keys in the properties can either be strings or symbols. If you send in a key that matches a special property, it will automatically be converted to the correct form (e.g., { :os => 'Mac' } will be converted to { :$os => 'Mac' }).

options is a hash that accepts the following keys:

• async : boolean

  Default: the async value from when the class was instantiated

• api_key: string

  Default: the api_key value from when the class was instantiated

• url: string

  Default: http://api.mixpanel.com/track/

  This can be used to proxy Mixpanel API requests.

Example:

@mixpanel.track 'Purchased credits', { :number => 5, 'First Time Buyer' => true }

Pixel Based Event Tracking

@mixpanel.tracking_pixel "Opened Email", { :distinct_id => "bob@email.com", :campaign => "Retarget" }

This allows to track events just by loading a pixel. It's usually useful for tracking opened emails. You've got to specify your own distinct_id as it won't be able to retrieve it from cookies.

And you can use it in your views with an image_tag helper:

image_tag @mixpanel.tracking_pixel("Opened Email", { :distinct_id => "bob@email.com", :campaign => "Retarget" }), :width => 1, :height => 1

Mixpanel docs: https://mixpanel.com/docs/api-documentation/pixel-based-event-tracking

Import Events

  @mixpanel.import event_name, properties, options

All of these options have the same meaning and same defaults as the track method, except that the default url is http://api.mixpanel.com/import/

Example:

@mixpanel.import 'Purchased credits', { :number => 4, :time => 5.weeks.ago }, { :api_key => MY_API_KEY}

Set Person Attributes Directly

@mixpanel.set distinct_id_or_request_properties, properties, options

distinct_id_or_request_properties is whatever is used to identify the user to Mixpanel or a hash of properties of the engage event that exist outside of the $set. Special properties will be automatically converted to the correct form (e.g., { :ip => '127.0.0.1' } will be converted to { :$ip => '127.0.0.1' }

properties is a hash of properties to be set. The keys in the properties can either be strings or symbols. If you send in a key that matches a special property, it will automatically be converted to the correct form (e.g., { :first_name => 'Chris' } will be converted to { :$first_name => 'Chris' }).

options is a hash that accepts the following keys:

• async: boolean

  Default: the async value from when the class was instantiated

• url: string

  Default: http://api.mixpanel.com/engage/

  This can be used to proxy Mixpanel API requests

Example using distinct_id to identify the user:

@mixpanel.set 'john-doe', { :age => 31, :email => 'john@doe.com' }

Example using request properties, telling mixpanel to ignore the time:

@mixpanel.set({ :distinct_id => 'john-doe', :ignore_time => true }, { :age => 31, :email => 'john@doe.com' })

Increment Person Attributes Directly

@mixpanel.increment distinct_id, properties, options

All of these options have the same meaning and same defaults as the set method. Note that according to Mixpanel's docs, you cannot combine set and increment requests, and that is why they are split here.

Example:

@mixpanel.increment 'john-doe', { :tokens => 5, :coins => -4 }

Append Events To Be Tracked With Javascript

Note: You should setup the Rack Middleware.

  @mixpanel.append_track event_name, properties

event_name and properties take the same form as tracking the event directly.

Note that you must call mixpanel.people.identify() in conjunction with People requests like set(). If you make set() requests before you identify the user, the change will not be immediately sent to Mixpanel. Mixpanel will wait for you to call identify() and then send the accumulated changes.

  @mixpanel.append_people_identify distinct_id
  @mixpanel.append_set properties

Execute Javascript API call

Note: You should setup the Rack Middleware.

  @mixpanel.append("register", {:some => "property"})
  @mixpanel.append("identify", "Unique Identifier")

Prevent middleware from inserting code

Note: Only applies when Rack Middleware is setup.

Occasionally you may need to send a request for HTML that you don't want the middleware to alter. In your AJAX request include the header "SKIP_MIXPANEL_MIDDLEWARE" to prevent the mixpanel code from being inserted.

  $.ajax("/path/to/api/endpoint", {
    headers: {"Skip-Mixpanel-Middleware": true}, // valid http headers don't allow underscores and get filtered by some webservers
    success: function(data) {
      // Process data here
    }
  });

Examples

How to use it from Rails controllers?

In your ApplicationController class add a method to keep track of a Mixpanel instance.

  def mixpanel
    @mixpanel ||= Mixpanel::Tracker.new YOUR_MIXPANEL_API_TOKEN, { :env => request.env }
  end

Then you can call against this method where it makes sense in your controller. For example, in the users#create method:

  def create
    @user = User.create( :name => 'Jane Doe', :gender => 'female', :mixpanel_identifer => 'asdf' )
    mixpanel.track 'User Created', {
      :gender => @user.gender,
      :distinct_id => @user.mixpanel_identifier,
      :time => @user.created_at
    } # Note that passing the time key overwrites the default value of Time.now

    mixpanel.set @user.mixpanel_identifer, { :gender => @user.gender, :created => @user.created_at, :name => @user.name }
  end

How to track events using Resque and Rails

While there is built-in async functionality, other options are more robust (e.g., using a dedicated queue manager). Below is an example of how this might be done with Resque, but the same concepts would apply no matter what queue manager you use.

class MixpanelTrackEventJob
  @queue = :slow

  def self.mixpanel env
    Mixpanel::Tracker.new MIXPANEL_TOKEN, { :env => env }
  end

  def self.perform name, properties, env
    mixpanel(env).track name, properties
  end
end

  class UsersController < ApplicationController
    def create
      @user = User.new(params[:user])

      if @user.save
        env = {
          'REMOTE_ADDR' => request.env['REMOTE_ADDR'],
          'HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR' => request.env['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'],
          'rack.session' => request.env['rack.session'],
          'mixpanel_events' => request.env['mixpanel_events']
        } # Trying to pass request.env to Resque is going to fail (it chokes when trying to conver it to JSON, but no worries...)

        Resque.enqueue MixpanelTrackEventJob, 'Sign up', { :invited => params[:invited] }, env

        redirect_to user_root_path
      else
        render :new
      end
    end
  end

Supported Ruby Platforms

• 1.8.7
• 1.9.2
• 1.9.3
• JRuby 1.8 Mode

Collaborators and Maintainers

• Alvaro Gil (Author)
• Nathan Baxter
• Jake Mallory
• Logan Bowers
• jakemack
• James Ferguson
• Brad Wilson
• Mark Cheverton
• Jamie Quint
• Ryan Schmukler
• Travis Pew
• Sylvain Niles
• GBH
• Goalee
• Ahmed Belal
• Esteban Pastorino
• Jeffrey Chu