Coding for Entrepreneurs

Custom Analytics with Django

By Justin

Custom Analytics with Django
Analytics can make our service better for our users. Custom analytics give us control over the data while providing many of the same key insights.
I love custom analytics because it can be so simple as you'll see below.
This guide is designed for Django but specifically for the eCommerce course. You can watch it here, below, or on youtube

1 - Create the analytics app

python manage.py startapp analytics

2 - Craft the Model

# analytics.models.py

from django.db import models
from django.contrib.contenttypes.fields import GenericForeignKey
from django.contrib.contenttypes.models import ContentType



class ObjectViewed(models.Model):
    user            = models.ForeignKey(User, blank=True, null=True)
    content_type    = models.ForeignKey(ContentType, on_delete=models.SET_NULL, null=True)
    object_id       = models.PositiveIntegerField()
    ip_address      = models.CharField(max_length=120, blank=True, null=True)
    content_object  = GenericForeignKey('content_type', 'object_id')
    timestamp       = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)

    def __str__(self, ):
        return "%s viewed: %s" %(self.content_object, self.timestamp)

    class Meta:
        ordering = ['-timestamp']
        verbose_name = 'Object Viewed'
        verbose_name_plural = 'Objects Viewed'

3 - Create the get_client_ip utility method

# analytics.utils.py

def get_client_ip(request):
    x_forwarded_for = request.META.get('HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR')
    if x_forwarded_for:
        ip = x_forwarded_for.split(',')[0]
    else:
        ip = request.META.get('REMOTE_ADDR')
    return ip

4 - Create a Django Signal

# analytics.signals.py 

from django.dispatch import Signal

object_viewed_signal = Signal(providing_args=['instance', 'request'])

5 - Create a Custom View Mixin (for Class Based Views)

# analytics.mixins.py

from .signals import object_viewed_signal

class ObjectViewMixin(object):
    def dispatch(self, request, *args,**kwargs):
        try:
            instance = self.get_object()
        except DoesNotExist:
            instance = None
        if instance is not None:
            object_viewed_signal.send(instance.__class__, instance=instance, request=request)
        return super(ObjectViewMixin, self).dispatch(request, *args, **kwargs)
You can now use this on any given Class Based View view that has a get_object method. Such as:
# products.views.py

from django.views.generic import DetailView


from analytics.mixins import ObjectViewMixin
from .models import Product


class ProductDetailView(ObjectViewMixin, DetailView):
    model = Product

6. Handle the Object Viewed Signal

# analytics.models.py 

from .signals import  object_viewed_signal

class ObjectViewed(models.Model):
    ...
    # code from above
    ...


def object_viewed_receiver(sender, instance, request, *args, **kwargs):
    c_type = ContentType.objects.get_for_model(sender)
    ip_address = None
    try:
        ip_address = get_client_ip(request)
    except:
        pass
    new_view_instance = ObjectViewed.objects.create(
                user=request.user, 
                content_type=c_type,
                object_id=instance.id,
                ip_address=ip_address
                )

object_viewed_signal.connect(object_viewed_receiver)

7. Challenge. Your Turn

I want to challenge you to make a way to monitor a User's Session. That is, save their session data after they login. It's not much different than above. What's cool about it is you can limit a user's number of sessions. Either way, we'll show you how to implement that in the section here and in the video below.

Watch

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