Google Analytics as a Page Object

26 Apr 2011 in PHP

The complexity of the underlying HTML templates is largely a matter of style. For someone who prefers only the document information and a series of component identifiers, there is a GoogleAnalytics object in the Istarel Workshop Application Framework.

Listing: page/html/public.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">

{*head*}
{*body*}
{*google*}

This approach requires two things: a constant defining the Google account number and a method that return a GoogleAnalytics object.

Partial Listing: rsrc/ApplicationDelegate.php

class ApplicationDelegate
{
    const GOOGLE_ACCOUNT_NUMBER = 'UA-7285492-1';

    ...
}

The constant can instead be defined as a global constant called GOOGLE_ACCOUNT_NUMBER. (I personally prefer class-based constants.) Each Page object has the ability to replace component identifiers with objects or text, using a method name constructed from the name of the component identifier.

Partial Listing: rsrc/page/PublicPage.php

class PublicPage extends HTML5Page
{
    ...

    function expectedComponents()
    {
        return array('head', 'body', 'google');
    }

    function replaceGoogle()
    {
        return GoogleAnalytics::googleCode();
    }
}