``django-user-tracking`` is a simple attempt at keeping track of visitors to
Django-powered Web sites. It also offers basic blacklisting capabilities.
The official repository for ``django-user-tracking`` is at
http://bitbucket.org/elevenbits/django-user-tracking. Please file
any tickets there.
Features
========
Tracks the following information about your visitors:
* Session key
* IP address
* User agent
* Whether or not they are a registered user and logged in
* Where they came from (http-referer)
* What page on your site they last visited
* How many pages on your site they have visited
Allows user-agent filtering for visitor tracking
Automatic clean-up of old visitor records
Can ban certain IP addresses, rendering the site useless to visitors from
those IP's (great for stopping spam)
The ability to have a live feed of active users on your website
Template tags to:
* display how many active users there are on your site
* determine how many active users are on the same page within your site
Optional "Active Visitors Map" to see where visitors are in the world
Requirements
============
This Django tracking module is based on work from Josh VanderLinden.
It currently works with Django 1.7. Some features, like the map use
jQuery 2.2.
TODO: check this
If you wish to use a Google Map to display where your visitors are probably at,
you must have a `Google Maps API key
<https://cloud.google.com/console/project>`_, which is free. You
are required to have the `GeoIP C API library
<http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/api/c/GeoIP.tar.gz>`_ installed.
You might want to grab the `GeoLite City binary
<http://www.maxmind.com/app/geolitecity>`_ unless you are a paying MaxMind
customer. This is the data file that ``django-tracking`` uses to translate an
IP into a location on the planet. Configuring this feature is discussed later.
Installation
============
Download ``django-user-tracking`` using pip::
pip install django-user-tracking
to download and install ``django-user-tracking``.
Configuration
=============
First of all, you must add this project to your list of ``INSTALLED_APPS`` in
``settings.py``::
INSTALLED_APPS = (
'django.contrib.admin',
'django.contrib.auth',
'django.contrib.contenttypes',
'django.contrib.sessions',
'django.contrib.sites',
...
'tracking',
...
)
Run ``manage.py syncdb``. This creates a few tables in your database that are
necessary for operation.
Depending on how you wish to use this application, you have a few options:
Visitor Tracking
----------------
Add ``tracking.middleware.VisitorTrackingMiddleware`` to your
``MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES`` in ``settings.py``. It must be underneath the
``AuthenticationMiddleware``, so that ``request.user`` exists.
Automatic Visitor Clean-Up
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
If you want to have Django automatically clean past visitor information out
your database, put ``tracking.middleware.VisitorCleanUpMiddleware`` in your
``MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES``.
IP Banning
----------
Add ``tracking.middleware.BannedIPMiddleware`` to your ``MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES``
in ``settings.py``. I would recommend making this the very first item in
``MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES`` so your banned users do not have to drill through any
other middleware before Django realizes they don't belong on your site.
Visitors on Page (template tag)
-------------------------------
Make sure that ``django.core.context_processors.request`` is somewhere in your
``TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS`` tuple. This context processor makes the
``request`` object accessible to your templates. This application uses the
``request`` object to determine what page the user is looking at in a template
tag.
Active Visitors Map
===================
If you're interested in seeing where your visitors are at a given point in
time, you might enjoy the active visitor map feature. Be sure you have added a
line to your main URLconf, as follows::
from django.conf.urls.defaults import *
urlpatterns = patterns('',
....
(r'^tracking/', include('tracking.urls')),
....
)
Next, set a couple of settings in your ``settings.py``:
* ``GOOGLE_MAPS_KEY``: Your very own Google Maps API key
* ``TRACKING_USE_GEOIP``: set this to ``True`` if you want to see markers on
the map
* ``GEOIP_PATH``: set this to the absolute path on the filesystem of your
``GeoIP.dat`` or ``GeoIPCity.dat`` or whatever file. It's usually something
like ``/usr/local/share/GeoIP.dat`` or ``/usr/share/GeoIP/GeoIP.dat``.
* ``GEOIP_CACHE_TYPE``: The type of caching to use when dealing with GeoIP data:
* ``0``: read database from filesystem, uses least memory.
* ``1``: load database into memory, faster performance but uses more
memory.
* ``2``: check for updated database. If database has been updated, reload
filehandle and/or memory cache.
* ``4``: just cache the most frequently accessed index portion of the
database, resulting in faster lookups than ``GEOIP_STANDARD``, but less
memory usage than ``GEOIP_MEMORY_CACHE`` - useful for larger databases
such as GeoIP Organization and GeoIP City. Note, for GeoIP Country,
Region and Netspeed databases, ``GEOIP_INDEX_CACHE`` is equivalent to
``GEOIP_MEMORY_CACHE``. *default*
* ``DEFAULT_TRACKING_TEMPLATE``: The template to use when generating the
visitor map. Defaults to ``tracking/visitor_map.html``.
When that's done, you should be able to go to ``/tracking/map/`` on your site
(replacing ``tracking`` with whatever prefix you chose to use in your URLconf,
obviously). The default template relies upon jQuery for its awesomeness, but
you're free to use whatever you would like.
Usage
=====
To display the number of active users there are in one of your templates, make
sure you have ``{% load tracking_tags %}`` somewhere in your template and do
something like this::
{% visitors_on_site as visitors %}
<p>
{{ visitors }} active user{{ visitors|pluralize }}
</p>
If you also want to show how many people are looking at the same page::
{% visitors_on_page as same_page %}
<p>
{{ same_page }} of {{ visitors }} active user{{ visitors|pluralize }}
{% ifequal same_page 1 %}is{% else %}are{% endifequal %} reading this page
</p>
If you don't want particular areas of your site to be tracked, you may define a
list of prefixes in your ``settings.py`` using the ``NO_TRACKING_PREFIXES``. For
example, if you didn't want visits to the ``/family/`` section of your website,
set ``NO_TRACKING_PREFIXES`` to ``['/family/']``.
If you don't want to count certain user-agents, such as Yahoo!'s Slurp and
Google's Googlebot, you may add keywords to your visitor tracking in your
Django administration interface. Look for "Untracked User-Agents" and add a
keyword that distinguishes a particular user-agent. Any visitors with the
keyword in their user-agent string will not be tracked.
By default, active users include any visitors within the last 10 minutes. If
you would like to override that setting, just set ``TRACKING_TIMEOUT`` to however
many minutes you want in your ``settings.py``.
For automatic visitor clean-up, any records older than 24 hours are removed by
default. If you would like to override that setting, set
``TRACKING_CLEANUP_TIMEOUT`` to however many hours you want in your
``settings.py``.
Good luck! Please contact me with any questions or concerns you have with the
project!