Deploying Google Analytics With Django

Question

We\'re about to deploy a new Django website, and we want to use Google Analytics to keep track of traffic on the site. However, we don\'t want all of the hits on developmen

Answer 1

My solution takes a similar approach to Ned's preferred answer, but separates the analytics code into its own template. I prefer this, so I can just copy the template from project to project.

Here's a snippet from my context_processor file:

from django.conf import settings
from django.template.loader import render_to_string

def analytics(request):
    """
    Returns analytics code.
    """
    if not settings.DEBUG:
        return { 'analytics_code': render_to_string("analytics/analytics.html", { 'google_analytics_key: settings.GOOGLE_ANALYTICS_KEY }) }
    else:
        return { 'analytics_code': "" }

Of course you'll need to tell Django to include this in your context. In in your settings.py file, include:

TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS = (
    ...
    "context_processors.analytics",
)

I have it set up to include the analytics code only when DEBUG is set to False, but you may prefer to key it off something else, perhaps a new setting altogether. I think DEBUG is a good default since it supposes you don't want to track any hits while debugging/developing.

Create a setting with your Google Analytics Key:

GOOGLE_ANALYTICS_KEY = "UA-1234567-8"

Create a template called: "analytics/analytics.html" that includes something like this:

Finally, just before the closing tag in your base.html template, add this:

{{ analytics_code }}

Now your analytics code will be included only when DEBUG=False. Otherwise, nothing will be included.