pirsch

README

Pirsch

Pirsch is a server side, no-cookie, drop-in and privacy focused tracking solution for Go. Integrated into a Go application it enables you to track HTTP traffic without invading the privacy of your visitors. The visualization of the data (dashboard) is not part of this project.

If you're looking for a managed solution with an easy-to-use API and JavaScript integration, check out https://pirsch.io/.

How does it work?

Pirsch generates a unique fingerprint for each visitor. The fingerprint is a hash of the visitors IP, User-Agent, the date, and a salt.

Each time a visitor opens your page, Pirsch will store a hit. The hits are analyzed using the Analyzer to extract meaningful data.

The tracking works without invading the visitor's privacy as no cookies are used nor required. Pirsch can track visitors using ad blockers that block trackers like Google Analytics.

Features

• unique visitor count per day, path, and hour
• session count
• bounce rate
• view count
• growth (unique visitors, sessions, bounces, views, average session duration)
• average time on page
• average session duration
• languages
• operating system and browser (including versions)
• referrers
• countries
• cities
• platform
• screen size
• UTM query parameters for campaign tracking
• entry and exit pages
• custom event tracking
• conversion goals

All timestamps are stored as UTC. Starting with version 2.1, the results can be transformed to the desired timezone. All data points belongs to an (optional) client, which can be used to split data between multiple domains for example. If you just integrate Pirsch into your application, you don't need to care about that field. But if you do, you need to set a client ID for all columns!

Usage

To store hits and statistics, Pirsch uses ClickHouse. Database migrations can be run manually be executing the migrations steps in schema or by using the automatic migration.

Make sure you read the changelog before upgrading! There are sometimes manual steps required to migrate the data to the new version.

Server-side tracking

Please refer to the demo for server-side tracking.

Client-side tracking

Please refer to the demo for client-side tracking and keeping sessions alive.

The scripts are configured using HTML attributes. All of them are optional, except for the id. Here is a list of the possible options.

Option	Description	Default
data-endpoint	The endpoint to call. This can be a local path, like /tracking, or a complete URL, like http://mywebsite.com/tracking. It must not contain any parameters.	/pirsch
data-client-id	The client ID to use, in case you plan to track multiple websites using the same backend, or you want to split the data. Note that the client ID must be validated in the backend.	0 (no client)
data-include	Specifies a list of regular expressions to test against. On a match, the page view or event will be included. This is done before excluding any pages.	(no paths)
data-exclude	Specifies a list of regular expressions to test against. On a match, the page view or event will be ignored. This is done after including any pages.	(no paths)
data-domain	Specifies a list of additional domains to send data to.	(empty list)
data-dev	Enable tracking hits on localhost. This is used for testing purposes only.	false
data-disable-query	Removes all query parameters from the URL.	false
data-disable-referrer	Disables the collection of the referrer.	false
data-disable-resolution	Disables the collection of the screen resolution.	false
data-param-*	Additional parameters to send with the request. The name send is everything after data-param-.	(no parameters)

The scripts can be disabled by setting the disable_pirsch variable in localStorage of your browser.

Mapping IPs to countries and cities

Pirsch uses MaxMind's GeoLite2 database to map IPs to countries. The database is not included, so you need to download it yourself. IP mapping is optional, it must explicitly be enabled by setting the GeoDB attribute of the TrackerConfig or through the HitOptions when calling HitFromRequest.

1. create an account at MaxMind
2. generate a new license key
3. call geodb.Get with the path you would like to extract the tarball to and pass your license key
4. create a new GeoDB by using NewGeoDB and the file you downloaded and extracted using the step before

The GeoDB should be updated on a regular basis. The Tracker has a method SetGeoDB to update the GeoDB at runtime (thread-safe).

Filtering IP addresses

It's possible to filter bots using an IP address list. Currently, Pirsch supports Udger.

1. create an account at Udger
2. subscribe to the local parser (SQLite) IP list
3. create an ip.Udger object using your access key
4. pass it to the Tracker

The list inside ip.Udger can be automatically updated by calling ip.Udger.Update.

Documentation

Read the full documentation for details, check out demos, or read the article at https://marvinblum.de/blog/server-side-tracking-without-cookies-in-go-OxdzmGZ1Bl.

Building the scripts

To minify pirsch.js/pirsch-events.js/pirsch-sessions.js to pirsch.min.js/pirsch-events.min.js/pirsch-sessions.min.js you need to run npm i and npm run build inside the js directory.

Things to maintain

The following things need regular maintenance/updates (using the scripts in the scripts directory when possible):

• Go and JS dependencies
• referrer blacklist
• User-Agent blacklist
• browser version mapping
• os version mapping
• referrer mapping (grouping)

GeoDB updates itself if used.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.

Contribution

Contributions are welcome! Please open a pull requests for your changes and tickets in case you would like to discuss something or have a question.

To run the tests you'll need a ClickHouse database, and a schema called pirschtest. The user is set to default (no password).

Note that we only accept pull requests if you transfer the ownership of your contribution to us. As we also offer a managed commercial solution with this library at its core, we want to make sure we can keep control over the source code.

License

GNU AGPLv3

Documentation

Index

• Constants
• Variables
• type Direction
• type Period

Constants

const (
	// BrowserChrome represents the Chrome and Chromium browser.
	BrowserChrome = "Chrome"

	// BrowserFirefox represents the Firefox browser.
	BrowserFirefox = "Firefox"

	// BrowserSafari  represents the Safari browser.
	BrowserSafari = "Safari"

	// BrowserOpera represents the Opera browser.
	BrowserOpera = "Opera"

	// BrowserEdge represents the Edge browser.
	BrowserEdge = "Edge"

	// BrowserIE represents the Internet Explorer browser.
	BrowserIE = "IE"

	// OSWindows represents the Windows operating system.
	OSWindows = "Windows"

	// OSMac represents the Mac operating system.
	OSMac = "Mac"

	// OSLinux represents a Linux distribution.
	OSLinux = "Linux"

	// OSAndroid represents the Android operating system.
	OSAndroid = "Android"

	// OSiOS represents the iOS operating system.
	OSiOS = "iOS"

	// OSWindowsMobile represents the Windows Mobile operating system.
	OSWindowsMobile = "Windows Mobile"
)

const (
	// PeriodDay groups the results by date.
	PeriodDay = Period(iota)

	// PeriodWeek groups the results by week.
	PeriodWeek

	// PeriodMonth groups the results by month.
	PeriodMonth

	// PeriodYear groups the result by year.
	PeriodYear

	// PlatformDesktop filters for everything on desktops.
	PlatformDesktop = "desktop"

	// PlatformMobile filters for everything on mobile devices.
	PlatformMobile = "mobile"

	// PlatformUnknown filters for everything where the platform is unspecified.
	PlatformUnknown = "unknown"

	// Unknown filters for an unknown (empty) value.
	// This is a synonym for "null".
	Unknown = "null"

	// DirectionASC sorts results in ascending order.
	DirectionASC = Direction("ASC")

	// DirectionDESC sorts results in descending order.
	DirectionDESC = Direction("DESC")
)

Variables

var NullClient = int64(0)

NullClient is a placeholder for no client (0).

Types

type Direction

type Direction string

Direction is used to sort results.

type Period

type Period int

Period is used to group results.