DSpace Google Analytics Statistics

NOTE - This page is a work in progress!!!!!!!!!!!

Google Analytics Recording

For a number of years now it has been possible to record User Interface traffic by enabling the recording of Google Analytics data within DSpace using the jspui.google.analytics.key or xmlui.google.analytics.key in the DSpace configuration file dspace.cfg. Until DSpace version 5.0 only User Interface activity could be recorded, that is to say that downloads initiated straight from a Google search (or any other search engine) were not recorded. As of DSpace version 5.0 downloads are now recorded as Google 'Events', so that all item page views and bitstream downloads are now recorded. 

Google Analytics Reporting

As of DSpace version 5.0 it has also become possible to expose that recorded Google Analytics data within DSpace. At present this is only available to those sites using themes based on the XMLUI Mirage2 theme but it is hoped that further development will result in it being available for other XMLUI themes and for the JSPUI. The data is retrieved from Google using the Google Analytics Reporting API v3. This feature is disabled by default, to enable it please follow the following instructions.

Please read the documentation found at  https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/core/v3/  and https://developers.google.com/accounts/docs/OAuth2ServiceAccount. It is the definitive documentation, however, it is over detailed for our purposes so the critical steps are summarised below. The theory is that as a developer you would create a Google project, write your application and store the code in the Google code repository, then create a Google Service Account which your application could use to retrieve data from the Google Analytics API. In our case we already have our application, DSpace, but we still have to go through the motions of creating a project in order to be able to be able to generate the Service Account which we need to allow DSpace to talk to the Google Analytics API.

Enable the Google Analytics XMLUI aspect by editing the configuration file dspace/config/xmlui.xconf.

Logon to the Google Developers Console with whatever email address you use to access/manage your existing Google Analytics account(s) https://console.developers.google.com/project.

Create a new Google Project. The assumption is that you are developing some new software and will make use of the Google code repository. This is not the case but you need to create the skeleton project before you can proceed to the next step.

Enable the Analytics API for the project. In the sidebar on the left, expand APIs & auth. Next, click APIs. In the list of APIs, make sure the status is ON for the Analytics API.

In the sidebar on the left, select Credentials. The subsequent process will generate the required Service Account email address and certificate.

Go to your Google Analytics dashboard http://www.google.com/analytics/. Create an account for the newly generated Service Account email address and give it permission to 'Read and Analyze' at account level.


# Not sure if this is required but it was in the example code provided by Google.
application.name = Dummy Project

# Each property (or website in plain english) can have a number of views associated with it. Using the Google
# Analytics dashboard select the property you wish to target and then select the admin section for that property. You
# should then be able to select the 'view settings' for the view you are interested in. The View ID should replace
# 12345678 below. Confusingly the Reporting API refers to the View ID as Table ID.
table.id = ga:12345678

# The email address automatically generated when you created the Service Account.
account.email = xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@developer.gserviceaccount.com

# The certificate file automatically generated when you created the Service Account.
certificate.location = /home/example/dslweb--privatekey.p12

# Control if the statistics pages should be only shown to authorized users. If enabled, only the administrators
# for the DSpaceObject will be able to view the statistics. If disabled, anyone with READ permissions on the
# DSpaceObject will be able to view the statistics.
authorization.admin.usage = true