I'd like to pass the Unix timestamp to a hit level eVar in DTM. I would assume I could pass some Javascript like this:
function() {
var now = new Date();
return now.getTime();
}
However, I am not sure where to pass it in DTM. Would this be passed in the "Customize Page Code" editor in the Tool Settings or somewhere else?
You can create a Data Element of type Custom Code. Name it something like current_timestamp or whatever. The code should not be wrapped in the function declaration syntax (DTM already wraps it in a function callback internally). So just put the following in the code box:
var now = new Date();
return now.getTime();
Then in your Adobe Analytics Tool Config (for global variables), or within a Page Load, Event Based, or Direct Call Rule, within the Adobe Analytics Config section. choose which eVar you want to set, and for the value, put %current_timestamp% (or whatever you named it, using % at start/end of it. You should see it show up in a dropdown as you start typing % in the value field).
Alternatively, if you want to assign the eVar in a custom code box in one of those locations, you can use the following javascript syntax e.g (assume eVar1 in example).
s.eVar1 = _satellite.getVar('current_timestamp');
Note that with this syntax, you do not wrap the data element name with %
One last note. This is client-side code, so the timestamp will be based on the user's browser's timezone settings. So for example, a visitor from the US and another visitor from China both visiting a page physically at the same time (server request at the same time), will show two different timestamps because they are in two different timezones.
This makes for some misleading data in reports, so make sure you break it down by other geo based dimensions, or do some extra math in your Data Element to convert the timestamp to a single timezone (e.g. convert it to EST). In practice, most people will pick whatever timezone their office is located in, or else what their server's timezone is set to.
Related
I'm wondering how to let my customer 'personalize' their view executing some of my custom functions using an mustache/handlebar format, but I'm not able to understand how to do it effectively. I have it in my mind the flow, but in code, I don't know where to start.
Example given:
I want my users to be able to invoke a function/method called read_json(url,key)
So in my mind, the flow should be to have a template like mustache or liquid and have: Today the weather is {{read_json(https://weathersystem,temperature)}} degrees and have it rendered to: Today the weather is 56 degrees.
Or maybe having a set of functions that the user will declare as variable weather somewhere in my rails database, specific to the user like: weather=read_json("https:/weathersystem", temperature) and then the user would be able to do something like: Today the weather is {{weather}} degrees
Since the text or function the user might want to add or {{ function }} to be rendered every time it's invoked by the users since the text they have this could be rendered in a normal view or into an API response.
I'm kinda struggling figuring it out what or how can be done.
Cheers!
I think it should be done on client side
so if you use jQuery, you can do this
your view file: x.html
<div>Today the weather is <span class="read-json" data-type="weathersystem" data-subtype="temperature"></span> degrees</div>
javascript file
$('.read-json').each(function(el) {
var $el = $(el)
var type = $el.data('type')
var subType = $el.data('subType')
// url = ... set URL based on `type` and `subType` variable above
$el.load(url)
}
As my work involves viewing many items from a website, I need to know which items have been visited and which not, so as to avoid repeated viewing.
The problem is that the URL of these items include some garbage parameters that are dynamically changing. This means the browser's history record is almost useless in identifying which items have already been viewed.
This is an example of the URL:
https://example.com/showitemdetail/?item_id=e6de72e&hitkey=true&index=234&cur_page=1&pageSize=30
Only the "item_id=e6de72e" part is useful in identifying each item. The other parameters are dynamic garbage.
My question is: how to let Chrome mark only the "example.com/showitemdetail/?item_id=e6de72e" part as visited, and ignore the rest parameters?
Please note that I do NOT want to modify the URLs, because that might alarm the website server to suspect that I am abusing their database. I want the garbage parameters to be still there, but the browser history mechanism to ignore them.
I know this is not easy. I am proposing a possible solution, but do not know whether it can be implemented. It's like this:
Step: 1) An extension background script to extract the item_id from each page I open, and then store it in a collection of strings. This collection of strings should be saved in a file somewhere.
Step: 2) Each time I open a webpage with a list of various items, the background script verifies whether each URL contains a string which matches any one in the above collection. If so, that URL would be automatically added to history. Then that item will naturally be shown as visited.
Does the logic sound OK? And if so how to implementable it by making a simple extension?
Of course, if you have other more neat solutions, I'd be very interested to learn.
Assuming that the link to the items always have the item_id, that would work, yes.
You would need the following steps:
Recording an element
content_script that adds a code to the product pages and tracks it.
On accessing the product page:
i. You can extract the current product id by checking the URL parameters (see one of these codes).
ii. You use storage api to retrieve a certain stored variable, say: visited_products. This variable you need to implement it as a Set since it's the best data type to handle unique elements.
iii. You check whether the current element is on the list with .has(). If yes, then you skip it. If all is good, it should always be new, but no harm in checking. If not, then you use add() to add the new product id (although Set will not allow you to add a repeated items, so you can skip the check and just save add it directly). Make sure you store it to Chrome.
Now you have registered a visit to a product.
Checking visited elements
You use a content_script again to be inserted on product pages or all pages if desired.
You get all the links of the page with document.querySelectorAll(). You could apply a CSS selector like: a[href*="example.com/showitemdetail/?item_id="] which would select all the links whose href contains that URL portion.
Then, you iterate the links with a for loop. On each iteration, you extract the item_id. Probably, the easiest way is: /(?:item_id=)(.*?)(?:&|$)/. This matches all characters preceded by item_id= (not captured) until it finds an & or end of the string (whichever happens first, and not captured).
With the id captured, you can check the Set of the first part with .has() to see whether it's on the list.
Now, about how to handle whether it's on the list, depends on you. You could hide visited elements. Or apply different CSS classes or style to them so you differentiate them easily.
I hope this gives you a head start. Maybe you can give it a try and, if you cannot make it work, you can open a new question with where you got stuck.
Thanks a lot, fvbuendia. After some trial and error elbow grease, I made it.
I will not post all the codes here, but will give several tips for other users' reference:
1) To get the URL of newly opened webpage and extract the IDs, use chrome.tabs.onUpdated.addListener and extractedItemId = tab.url.replace(/..../, ....);
2) Then save the IDs to storage.local, using chrome.storage.local.set and chrome.storage.local.get. The IDs should be saved to an object array.
1) and 2) should be written in the background script.
3) Each time the item list page is opened, the background calls a function in the content script, asking for all the URLs in the page. Like this:
chrome.tabs.onUpdated.addListener(function(tabId, changeInfo, tab) {
if(changeInfo.status == "complete") {
if(tab.url.indexOf("some string typical of the item list page URL") > -1) {
chrome.tabs.executeScript(null, { code: 'getalltheurls();' });
} }
});
4) The function to be executed in content script:
function getalltheurls() {
var urls = [];
var links = document.links;
for (var i = 0; i < links.length; i++) {
if(links[i].href.indexOf("some string typical of the item list URLs") > -1) { urls.push(links[i].href);}
}
chrome.runtime.sendMessage({ urls: urls });
};
5) Background receives the URLs, then converts them to an array of IDs, using
idinlist = urls[i].replace(........)
6) Then background gets local storage, using chrome.storage.local.get, and checks if these IDs are in the stored array. If so, add the URL to history.
for (var i = 0; i < urls.length; i++) {
if (storedIDs.indexOf(idinlist) > -1 ) { chrome.history.addUrl({ url: urls[i] }); }
}
I have an event-based rule configured to fire on click of an element with a specific class. On click, I would like to capture the value of a data attribute that exists. The DTM documentation says you can capture attribute values using this syntax:
%this.data-event%
or
%this.id%
Example HTML:
On click of links with the class "test", I would like to store the value of "event name" within an eVar. When I used the above syntax however, the syntax is converted to a string and in the Adobe server call as:
v25:%this.data-event%
What is the best way to dynamically grab the value of an attribute of an HTML element on click within DTM?
DTM documentation says you can do that, but in practice I too have found that it doesn't seem to work as advertised most of the time, and will instead populate it with a literal (un-eval'd) string like that.
So what I do instead is under Conditions > Rule Conditions I create a Custom condition. In the Custom condition, I add the following:
// example to get id
_satellite.setVar('this_id',this.id);
// example to get href
_satellite.setVar('this_href',this.href);
return true;
Basically I create on-the-fly data elements using javascript, and then return true (so the condition doesn't affect the rule from triggering).
Then I use %this_id%, %this_href%, etc. syntax from the data element I created, in the Adobe Analytics section variable fields.
The easist way to capture the values of a data attribute against an eVar or prop on the element clicked using DTM is to set the input as the following:
%this.getAttribute(data-attributename)%
For example, if there was a data attribute on an element of data-social-share-destination='facebook' simply input %this.getAttribute(data-social-share-destination)%. This will then capture the value of 'facebook'
More detail on data attributes can be found at http://www.digitalbalance.com.au/our-blog/event-based-tracking-using-html5-custom-data-attributes/
I found a solution. The best way to grab the value of an attribute on click is to use this syntax:
%this.getAttribute(data-title)%
The key is to not use quotes around the attribute name AND ensure the attribute has a value.
If the attribute is missing, the expression is not replaced by an empty string as one would normally expect from experience in other platforms, but instead will display the raw un-interpolated code.
We're in the process of moving to DTM implementation. We have several variables that are being defined on page. I understand I can make these variables available in DTM through data elements. Can I simply set up a data elem
So set data elements
%prop1% = s.prop1
%prop2% = s.prop2
etc
And then under global rules set
s.prop1 = %s.prop1%
s.prop2 = %s.prop2%
etc
for every single evar, sprop, event, product so they populate whenever they are set on a particular page. Good idea or terrible idea? It seems like a pretty bulky approach which raises some alarm bells. Another option would be to write something that pushes everything to the datalayer, but that seems like essentially the same approach with a redundant step when they can be grabbed directly.
Basically I want DTM to access any and all variables that are currently being set with on-page code, and my understanding is that in order to do that they must be stored in a data element first. Does anyone have any insight into this?
I use this spec for setting up data layers: Data Layer Standard
We create data elements for each key that we use from the standard data layer. For example, page name is stored here
digitalData.page.pageInfo.pageName
We create a data element and standardize the names to this format "page.pageInfo.pageName"
Within each variable field, you access it with the %page.pageInfo.pageName% notation. Also, within javascript of rule tags, you can use this:
_satellite.getVar('page.pageInfo.pageName')
It's a bit unwieldy at times but it allows you to separate the development of the data layer and tag manager tags completely.
One thing to note, make sure your data layer is complete and loaded before you call the satellite library.
If you are moving from a legacy s_code implementation to DTM, it is a good best practice to remove all existing "on page" code (including the reference to the s_code file) and create a "data layer" that contains the data from the eVars and props on the page. Then DTM can reference the object on the page and you can create data elements that map to variables.
Here's an example of a data layer:
<script type="text/javascript">
DDO = {} // Data Layer Object Created
DDO.specVersion = "1.0";
DDO.pageData = {
"pageName":"My Page Name",
"pageSiteSection":"Home",
"pageType":"Section Front",
"pageHier":"DTM Test|Home|Section Front"
},
DDO.siteData = {
"siteCountry":"us",
"siteRegion":"unknown",
"siteLanguage":"en",
"siteFormat":"Desktop"
}
</script>
The next step would be to create data elements that directly reference the values in the object. For example, if I wanted to create a data element that mapped to the page name element in my data layer I would do the following in DTM:
Create a new data element called "pageName"
Select the type as "JS Object"
In the path field I will reference the path to the page name in my data layer example above - DDO.pageData.pageName
Save the data element
Now this data element can be referenced in any variable field within any rule by simply typing a '%'. DTM will find any existing data elements and you can select them.
I also wrote about a simple script you can add to your implementation to help with your data layer validation.Validate your DTM Data Layer with this simple script
Hope this helps.
I have the below code in my web site.
I want to track each anchor tag using DTM. I know how to track single element. Since here we have a bunch of different elements, can anyone help how to track them using DTM? I don't want to create separate rule for each element. In a single rule how can we track these elements.
Here is an example of what you can do.
For Element Tag or Selector put "a.at-share-btn" (no quotes). This will target all the relevant links first. We can look for this too in the next step, but "pre-qualifying" it with this will improve performance so that the rule is not evaluated against every single a click.
Then, under Rule Conditions, add a Criteria of type Data > Custom.
In the Custom box, add the following:
var shareType = this.getAttribute('class').match(/\bat-svc-([a-z_-]+)/i);
if (shareType&&shareType[1]) {
_satellite.setVar('shareType',shareType[1]);
return true;
}
return false;
This code looks for the class (e.g. "at-svc-facebook") and puts the last part of it (e.g. "facebook") into a data element named shareType.
Then, you can reference it using %shareType% in any of the DTM fields. Note: because this data element is made on-the-fly, it will not show up in the auto-complete when you type it out in a field.
Alternatively, in custom code boxes (e.g. if you are needing to reference it in a javascript/3rd party tag box), you can use _satellite.getVar('shareType')