Click Logging with JavaScript

Question

I want to log all clicks on a link.

I\'ve written a little logger, which can be called by an url (returns an empty page). This url is called with a jquery-ajax-metho

Answer 1

This example will fire off an ajax post before the link click is processed. I found I had to call ajax synchronously or the POST will not be executed. In this example my ajax post is to a PHP page which appends a log file. This example is efficient since it only attaches a click event to the window. It also will not interfere with a user clicking a link.

//attach click event to window
attachClickEvent = function() {
    $(document).on('click', function(e) { //document for IE8 compatibility
        var element = $(e.target);
        var tag = element.prop('tagName');

        if (tag === 'A') {
            var data = {'title':document.title, 'URL':element.attr('href'), 'origin':location.href};
            logData(data);
        }
    });
}

logData = function(data) {
    $.ajax({
        async: false,
        cache: false,
        type: "POST",
        data: data,
        url: 'logger.php',
        success: function(msg) { 
            //debugging
        },
        error: function() {
            //debugging
        }
    });
}