Google Analytics Code Explanation

Question

Can someone explain this code \'step by step\',\'line by line\'? I would like to learn more about Asynch code and how Google loads their script, how to \'hide\' javascrippt

Answer 1

The code has been run through a minifier, and looks like this when pretty printed:

(function (i, s, o, g, r, a, m) {
    i['GoogleAnalyticsObject'] = r;
    i[r] = i[r] || function () {
        (i[r].q = i[r].q || []).push(arguments)
    }, i[r].l = 1 * new Date();
    a = s.createElement(o),
    m = s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];
    a.async = 1;
    a.src = g;
    m.parentNode.insertBefore(a, m)
})(window, document, 'script', '//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js', 'ga');

ga('create', 'UA-xxxxxxxx-x', 'xxxxxx.com');
ga('send', 'pageview');

To know what it exactly does, you'd probably have to take a look at their analytics.js file, but as that's very likely to be minified as well, you're not going to get much out of it.

If you want to do the same thing, you could use a code minifier like JSMin. It replaces any unnessecary whitespace and newline characters, among other things, to help reduce bandwidth.