PhoenixKitWebAnalytics
Web analytics for PhoenixKit sites — who comes to the site, where from, what they do, and when they leave — recorded by your own server, in your own database.
A Phoenix app already sees nearly everything a hosted analytics script reports: every page request passes through the router, and on LiveView pages every click, form submit and navigation arrives over the socket. This module records it there, server-side:
pipeline :browser do
# … existing plugs, after :fetch_session …
plug PhoenixKitWebAnalytics.Plug
end
live_session :public,
on_mount: [{PhoenixKitWebAnalytics.LiveHook, :track_navigation}] do
# …
end
An optional client script (shipped with the module, switched off until you enable it) adds only what a server cannot see: outbound and download clicks, scroll depth, and exits from pages without a LiveView.
Why server-side
- Nothing to download. The plug and the LiveView hook add no bytes to a page; Core Web Vitals are what they were.
- No cookies, and by default nothing to ask consent for. Visitors are identified by a salted hash of IP + User-Agent + date. Out of the box no IP address, no raw User-Agent and no query string is written to the database. (An ad platform's click identifier is kept when a visit arrives with one — see Privacy.) Keeping more is a setting, one kind of data at a time — see What is kept about a visitor.
- Ad blockers can't remove it. The numbers are your server's.
- The data is yours. Five tables in your own database; nothing leaves your infrastructure.
What gets recorded
| What | How | Needs |
|---|---|---|
| Page views | Every HTML response (the plug); every LiveView navigation (the hook) | the plug; the hook for LiveView |
| Interactions | Every event a LiveView handles — phx-click, phx-submit, … — by name. Form typing and form contents are never recorded |
the hook |
| Exits and time on page | When a LiveView process ends (tab closed, navigated away, connection lost) | the hook |
| Who is online now | The open LiveView processes, live | the hook |
Outbound / download / contact clicks, plain buttons, data-analytics elements |
Browser click listener | client script |
| Scroll depth; exits from non-LiveView pages | Browser scroll and page-hide listeners | client script |
| Custom events | PhoenixKitWebAnalytics.track_event/2 on the server; phoenixKitAnalytics(name, props) in the browser |
— / client script |
| Device measurements and a device hash (optional, off by default) | Screen, time zone, languages, processor, graphics card, fonts, canvas and audio rendering — once per page load, only when asked | client script + Keep device measurements |
| Session recordings (optional, off by default) | Pointer movement, clicks, hovers and scrolling per page view — coordinates and element positions only, never text, typing or form values; replayed on the visit page | client script + Record visits |
Signed-in users are attributed by their account on every hit, so a person's visits can be followed across the site (Sessions → a user's visits).
Admin pages
Under Web Analytics in the PhoenixKit sidebar:
| Page | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Overview | Visitors, page views, sessions, bounce rate, session length and time on page, with change against the previous period; the trend; top pages, referrers, channels, devices, what visitors do, exit pages |
| Right now | Every page open this moment, for how long, by whom (signed-in name or anonymous), on what; visits active in the last five minutes |
| Sessions | Every visit: who, landing → exit page, pages, actions, duration, source, client. Opens a visit timeline — everything that visitor did, in order — with the recording player when the visit was recorded, and why it counts as a bot's when it does |
| Pages | Every path with views, time on page and exits; a path opens the overview filtered to it; slowest pages by server response time |
| Acquisition | Channels (direct / search / social / referral / email / paid), referring sites, UTM campaigns |
| Technology | Browsers, operating systems, devices, languages, countries |
| Events | What visitors do (interactions), custom events, and a live feed of every hit |
| Bots | Visitors by how much they look automated and why; grouped by network, subnet, address, device or User-Agent; the likely bots of a grouping as a list to block by |
| Settings | Collection rules, bot detection, retention, interaction and client-script switches, session recordings, alerts, stored-data stats, installation checklist |
Charts are core's server-rendered SVG components — no charting library, no JavaScript in the admin either.
Installation
# mix.exs
{:phoenix_kit_web_analytics, "~> 0.2"}
mix deps.get
mix phoenix_kit.update # creates / upgrades the module's tables
Then enable Web Analytics on the admin Modules page, and:
-
The plug in your browser pipeline, after
:fetch_session(above). Where exactly doesn't matter otherwise: who is signed in (for Your own traffic) is read as the response is sent, after the rest of the pipeline and the controller have run. PhoenixKit's own routes — the admin panel among them — pipe through your:browserfirst and only then load the user (:phoenix_kit_auto_setup) and, for the admin, the scope; the plug still sees them. Where only the user is loaded (no scope), their roles come from a five-minute cache, looked up off the request on a miss: the first such request after a cold start doesn't mark the staff network, the next one does. -
The hook in each public
live_session, after whatever mounts the current user, so signed-in visitors are attributed:live_session :public, on_mount: [ {PhoenixKitWeb.Users.Auth, :phoenix_kit_mount_current_scope}, {PhoenixKitWebAnalytics.LiveHook, :track_navigation} ] do -
connect_infoon the LiveView socket, on both transports — the hook needs the address and browser to hash the visitor the same way the plug does, and LiveView falls back to long polling when a websocket can't be opened (corporate proxies, flaky networks):socket "/live", Phoenix.LiveView.Socket, websocket: [connect_info: [:peer_data, :x_headers, :user_agent, session: @session_options]], longpoll: [connect_info: [:peer_data, :x_headers, :user_agent, session: @session_options]]Without
:peer_dataand:user_agentthe hook stays inert rather than recording visitors it would hash wrongly.:x_headerscarries the forwarded address behind a reverse proxy; without it a socket with a private or loopback peer (a proxy, a container network,localhostin development) is skipped, and Settings warns about it. -
Behind a reverse proxy on the same box or network (nginx, Caddy, Traefik, a container network) nothing more is needed: the visitor's address is read from the forwarded headers — see Behind a reverse proxy. Behind a chain (a CDN in front of a load balancer), put a plug that rewrites
remote_ipfrom headers your infrastructure controls — such asremote_ip— before the tracking plug, or every visitor collapses into the CDN's addresses. -
Optional: pages Chrome serves from its prefetch cache. When Chrome prefetches or prerenders a page (Speculation Rules — Google's search results do it) and the visitor then opens it, no second request reaches the plug; the prefetch itself is stored flagged as a bot's (see Bots). To count the visit, send a few extra LiveSocket connect params from your
assets/js/app.jsand connect only once a prerendered page is shown — the snippet is in the "Recovering a visitor served from a prefetch cache" section ofPhoenixKitWebAnalytics.LiveHook. Only LiveView pages are recovered this way: a controller-rendered page served from the prefetch cache is not counted.
The client script ships through the module's js_sources/0, so a host set up
by mix phoenix_kit.install loads it with no change; switch Accept the
client script on in Settings to have its reports stored.
Alerts
The module registers a Website activity notification type with PhoenixKit, with three sub-types — new visitors, new sign-ups (every registration path) and tracked events (names you list in Settings). Alerts go to everyone who can open Web Analytics; each person picks, on their notification settings page, whether they arrive in-app, by email or on Telegram, and can switch a type to an hourly or daily digest.
Visitor alerts are off by default and have filters, because one per visitor is a flood on any real site: only certain channels, only certain landing pages, skip signed-in users, and an hourly cap (the next alert says how many were held back). Alert text never contains an email address or anything a visitor typed.
Custom events
From server-side code, where the event is a fact your app already knows:
PhoenixKitWebAnalytics.track_event("order.placed", %{
path: "/checkout",
metadata: %{"total_cents" => 4900},
user_uuid: user.uuid
})
Inside a request, pass the conn: the event then takes the visitor's address, User-Agent and site from it, so it joins that visitor's visit, and it follows the visitor's answer under the consent rules:
PhoenixKitWebAnalytics.track_event("order.placed", %{conn: conn, path: "/checkout"})
track_pageview/1 takes :conn the same way. A hit with neither :conn
nor :consent is stored on your word — the module asks nothing of the
visitor for it. Passing :ip or :user_agent by hand while a rule waits for
an answer stores an event and a profile for a visitor who may have refused.
From the browser, with the client script enabled (or the <.beacon />
component — import PhoenixKitWebAnalytics.Web.Beacon in the layout that
renders it):
<button onclick="phoenixKitAnalytics('signup', {plan: 'pro'})">Sign up</button>
Any element can be named for click tracking with data-analytics="name".
For pages served from a full-page CDN cache that never reaches your app,
<.pixel path={@path} cache_buster={@request_id} /> records the view with a
1×1 image (switch Accept the beacon and pixel on).
Querying the data yourself
PhoenixKitWebAnalytics.Reports is a plain module:
import PhoenixKitWebAnalytics.Reports
filter = filter(period: "30d")
overview(filter)
#=> %{pageviews: 18_204, visitors: 6_133, sessions: 7_802, bounce_rate: 41.2, …}
top_paths(filter, limit: 20)
sessions(filter, user_uuid: user.uuid) # one person's visits
session_timeline(session_id) # one visit, replayed
How counting works
Stated explicitly, because it's what makes two analytics tools disagree:
- Page views — HTML responses and LiveView navigations. A LiveView reconnect is not a page view, and neither is a patch that only changes the query string.
- Visitors — daily unique visitor hashes among page views, added across
the period. One visitor on three days counts as three under every
web_analytics_visitor_rotation. The "right now" figure counts unique IDs within its short window. - Sessions — stitched server-side: a hit joins the visitor's previous session on the same site if it's within the inactivity window (30 minutes by default), otherwise it starts a new one. A session needs a page view. Report totals count each UTC day's portion of a visit separately; the visit list and timeline show the full visit.
- Bounce rate — daily visit portions with exactly one page view.
- Session length — first hit to last within each daily visit portion, exits included, so a single page read for three minutes on the same day is a three-minute session.
- Time on page — from exits: how long the page was open (LiveView) or visible (client script).
What is skipped
Non-GET requests, non-2xx responses, anything that isn't text/html, paths
matching the exclusion patterns (/admin* by default), visitors sending
DNT: 1 or Sec-GPC: 1 (on every path, LiveView and client script
included), and bots. All configurable in Settings. Tidewave's development
re-fetch of a page (an x-tidewave-diagnostic header) is never a page view.
A browser's speculative prefetch is stored, but as a bot's (see Bots).
Bots
A bot that names itself (Googlebot, link previews, uptime monitors, curl,
headless browsers …) is recognised by its User-Agent. One posing as a normal
browser is caught by what it does (PhoenixKitWebAnalytics.BotSignals, on by
default — Spot bots by behaviour):
- automation — the client script reports
navigator.webdriver, which Selenium, Puppeteer and Playwright set; - speed — more than 30 page views a minute from one visitor;
- no JavaScript — a LiveView page whose live connection never came (no exit, click or live navigation from that visitor all day), judged after 30 minutes. Only pages running the hook count, and the check pauses while the hook is skipping LiveView visits behind a proxy (see Behind a reverse proxy).
A flagged visit is marked as a bot's with the reason (shown on the visit page), so every report drops it; later hits of the visit inherit the flag. A "no JavaScript" verdict can be wrong, so that visit's later hits are kept (flagged) and the flag lifts itself if the visit's JavaScript shows up after all — a tab left open without a click until it closes.
A speculative prefetch — a page Chrome or Edge fetches or prerenders
before anyone clicks it (Sec-Purpose: prefetch…, or the legacy
Purpose: prefetch) — is stored flagged "prefetch" whatever Record bot
traffic says, so it shows only with the reports' Bots switch on. It is
kept apart from the visitor's own visit, even when Chrome sends it from the
visitor's browser. A <link rel=prefetch> (Sec-Fetch-Dest: empty) isn't
flagged: Chrome serves the later click on it from its cache without asking
again, so that request is counted as the page view. How the visit behind a
prefetch is still counted is step 5 of Installation.
Bot score and the Bots page
A flag is a verdict: the visit leaves the reports. Beside it, every visitor something is kept about (see What is kept about a visitor) carries a bot score — the sum of the weights of the reasons found — and the reasons themselves. Nothing is dropped, flagged or blocked because of a score; it is there to look at and decide by.
| Source | Reasons (weight) |
|---|---|
| The request, when a visit starts | says it is a bot (100) · no User-Agent (70) · hosting provider's network (40) · a phone's User-Agent from a hosting provider (30) · HTTP/1.0 (30) · no Accept-Language (25) · a current browser's User-Agent without Sec-Fetch-* (25, HTTPS only) · a Chromium User-Agent without Sec-CH-UA (20, HTTPS only) · no Accept (15) |
| The device, when the client script reports | device and User-Agent name different systems (50) · graphics drawn in software (40) · a screen or window with no size (40) · no browser language (40) · a phone's User-Agent without touch (30) |
| Behaviour (the three checks above) | automation (90) · speed (70) · no JavaScript (50) |
60 and over reads as likely a bot, 30 and over as suspicious. Header reasons need Keep request headers, network reasons Keep the network's owner and a resolver that knows it, device reasons Keep device measurements: what isn't collected can't count.
Web Analytics → Bots lists those visitors, the likeliest first, with their reasons, and groups them by what several share — network, subnet, address, device, User-Agent. A group opens its visitors; the address-shaped groupings offer their likely bots as a plain list to paste into a firewall or a CDN rule. Declared bots only appear with Record bot traffic on — otherwise they are dropped before anything is kept.
Your own traffic
Visits by the site's own people are real traffic, but not the audience. They
are stored with a mark and left out — of every report, the rollups,
"Right now", alerts and recordings — rather than dropped, so a switch turned
back brings them back. Three marks (traffic_flags on each event, bits of
PhoenixKitWebAnalytics.TrafficFlags; a hit can carry several):
| Mark | Set when |
|---|---|
| Internal network | the visitor's address is in one of the networks in config :phoenix_kit_web_analytics, internal_networks: [...] |
| Site staff | the signed-in user holds a staff role (web_analytics_internal_roles: Owner and Admin by default) — the roles they really hold, whichever one they are acting as |
| Staff network | the visitor's network (an IPv4 address, an IPv6 /64) had a staff member signed in or active within web_analytics_admin_network_hours (24 by default) |
The internal networks are app config, not a setting — every settings change is a permanent activity-log entry, and this one would be your own addresses:
# config/runtime.exs
config :phoenix_kit_web_analytics,
internal_networks: ["203.0.113.0/24", "2001:db8:1234::/48"]
A visit is marked whole: its later hits inherit its marks, and a mark that appears mid-visit — an anonymous visitor signs in as an admin — is written back to the visit's earlier hits. Visits before that, from the same address, are not: no address is stored, so there is nothing to match them against. A visit long enough to reach back past a day already rolled up for good (more than three hours after that day ended) has its earlier hits marked, but that day's rollup keeps counting them: until retention prunes the day's raw events, a report counting own traffic in and one leaving it out can differ for that day by those hits.
A staff network is learnt from a staff sign-in (the address the session was
issued to — so an admin who only ever works in the admin panel, which is
never tracked, still counts) and from a staff member's own requests on any
path, and is shared between nodes. It is kept in memory only. Behind a
mobile network, carrier-grade NAT or an office gateway, one address is many
people: a sign-in from a phone leaves out everyone sharing that address
for those hours. Count staff networks back in from Settings, or set the
hours to 0 to stop marking them. The hours are read when a network is
judged, so shortening them applies to the networks already learnt.
In Settings, each mark has its own Leave out switch (all on by default); on a report, Own traffic shows everything for that view, and Bots shows bot traffic. The rollups hold only unmarked, non-bot traffic, so a report that counts any mark in — by a switch in either place — reads its period from raw events: days older than the raw-event retention then show no data rather than their totals.
Privacy
The module sets no cookie and writes no local storage (the one thing it keeps in the host's session is described under consent), and with the settings as they ship no IP address and no raw User-Agent is stored. A visitor ID is
SHA256(salt + IP + User-Agent + date)
truncated to 32 hex characters. It can't be joined across days. The salt is a secret stored in your settings table: someone with access to the database could recompute the hash for an IP and browser they already know, so treat database access accordingly.
Query strings are not stored — not in paths and not in referrers. Campaign
parameters (utm_*) and an ad platform's click identifier (gclid, gbraid,
wbraid, msclkid, fbclid, ttclid, li_fat_id) are extracted into their
own columns first; everything else is discarded before the row is written. An
interaction keeps only the event's name and the short values of parameters
you allow-list (tab, view, step … by default) — never form contents.
A click identifier (click_id) is issued by the ad platform, not by this
module. It is pseudonymous rather than anonymous: it joins the rows of the
visit it arrived with (and a later visit that reopens the same landing URL),
and the platform can tie it to its own user. It is stored so the visit is
attributed to the ad, and so a host can report a conversion back to the
platform against it. The module itself never sends it anywhere. Whether such
a report is allowed — consent, your privacy notice — is the host's call. Like
every event column, it is deleted by the retention pass.
A signed-in visitor's hits carry their account id, which is what lets you follow a user's visits; anonymous visitors stay anonymous.
Session recordings are off unless switched on, and record coordinates and
short element selectors (main > form.signup > button) — never text,
keystrokes, form values or page content. Visitors asking not to be tracked,
bots and excluded paths are never recorded. The player loads the recorded page
as it looks today, in a sandboxed frame with scripts off, and only a page the
server itself saw that visit request — never a path the visitor's browser
merely claims. Recordings are deleted after 30 days by default.
The own-traffic marks are a few bits on the event — never the address that set them. The internal networks are your app's config; staff networks are held in memory, by their network key, for their hours, and never written to the database or the settings.
What is kept about a visitor
The defaults above are a starting point, not a rule the module enforces. What a site may keep, and whether it has to ask first, depends on the law it answers to and on what the data is for — telling crawlers apart and blocking abuse is not the same question as measuring an audience. So each kind of identifying data has its own setting (Settings → Who a visitor is), all of them off until switched on:
| Setting | Keeps |
|---|---|
web_analytics_visitor_rotation |
How long a visitor ID lasts: daily (default), weekly, monthly, or never — the same ID for as long as the address, browser and salt stay the same, which recognises a returning visitor across days |
web_analytics_store_ip |
The address: off (default), truncated (its /24 or /48 network) or full |
web_analytics_store_user_agent |
The raw User-Agent string — which crawler, which library, which exact version |
web_analytics_store_headers |
The request headers of a visit's first page view, in arrival order, with the protocol |
web_analytics_store_network |
The network's number (ASN), its owner and whether it is a hosting provider — when your geo resolver returns :asn, :network and :hosting |
web_analytics_store_signals |
What the client script measures about the device, and a salted hash of the stable part — a device hash that stays the same when the address changes. This is browser fingerprinting; it needs the client script on. The measurements are listed in PhoenixKitWebAnalytics.Signals |
They are written to one row per visitor ID
(phoenix_kit_web_analytics_visitor_profiles) when a visit starts, never to
the event rows, and shown on the visit's page. A row goes when its visitor
hasn't been seen for web_analytics_retention_days. Switching a setting off
stops it being recorded; PhoenixKitWebAnalytics.Admin.forget_profiles/2 removes
what is already stored (:ip, :user_agent, :headers, :network,
:signals or :all), along with the bot reasons that were read from it.
Never kept, whatever the settings: the value of a header that carries a
credential (Cookie, Authorization, anything named like a token, key or
secret — its name still shows that it was sent), and the query string of
Referer. Headers that carry the visitor's address (X-Forwarded-For and
the like) keep their value only when the address itself is kept whole.
Visitors means daily unique visitors added across the period, under every rotation: one visitor on three days counts as three. Raw reads and daily rollups use the same definition, including monthly charts and exit visitors. A longer-lived ID lets you follow returning visits; it does not change that aggregate. The "right now" figure counts unique IDs in its short window. Visit totals, bounce rate and average visit length also use daily portions: a visit spanning UTC midnight contributes separately to each day. The visit list and timeline continue to show the full visit.
Stored profile data can also be removed from Settings → Data & retention.
The removal records the acting user, kind and affected row count in the activity
log, never a stored value. Forgetting an address or User-Agent also removes its
values from stored request headers. Independent bot evidence remains until
retention or an explicit :all removal. Switch the corresponding collection
setting off first to prevent new values being collected.
Countries are only recorded if you configure a resolver
(PhoenixKitWebAnalytics.Geo) or run behind a CDN that sets a country header.
No IP database ships with this package.
When it is collected: consent
Whether a visitor has to be asked before any of this is collected depends on the law a site answers to, so the module takes no position. Each kind of collection has its own rule (Settings → When it is collected):
| Kind | Setting | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Counting visits | web_analytics_consent_measurement |
Page views, visits and events under the visitor ID |
| Details about a visitor | web_analytics_consent_profile |
What store_ip, store_user_agent, store_headers and store_network keep |
| Device measurements | web_analytics_consent_device |
What store_signals keeps |
| Session recordings | web_analytics_consent_recording |
Recordings |
and each rule is one of:
| Rule | Collected when |
|---|---|
always (default) |
Every time. The visitor is told, not asked — how the module worked before the rules existed |
consent |
The visitor said yes |
unless_objected |
The visitor has not said no, and the browser sends neither Sec-GPC: 1 nor DNT: 1 |
The settings page offers four starting points — Tell, don't ask, Count visits, ask for the rest, Ask first, Collect until refused — which only fill the four rules in; any combination can be saved.
The last three kinds describe a visitor, so they are only ever kept for one
whose visits are counted. A page view that may not be counted is dropped, or
— with web_analytics_without_consent set to anonymous — counted with no
visitor: its own visitor and visit, no user, no profile, so page totals stay
whole while visitor and visit counts rise with every such view. Such a view
keeps its campaign (utm_*), its country, and the browser and system with
the browser's major version, and nothing finer: no ad-click identifier, no
region, no city, no exact build. It is still marked as the site's own traffic
when it is (a staff member, an internal network). Its row is marked
metadata["anon"], it never raises a new-visitor alert, and it is never
judged a no-JavaScript bot.
Where the answer comes from. PhoenixKit's Legal module, when it is installed and its cookie banner is on: the banner reports each decision to the server, which sets a signed cookie this module reads. A site with its own consent tool points the module at it instead:
config :phoenix_kit_web_analytics, consent_source: {MyApp.Consent, :status}
# MyApp.Consent.status(conn, "analytics") :: :granted | :denied | :unknown
With neither, every visitor is unanswered: consent collects nothing (the
settings page warns) and unless_objected collects for everyone whose browser
does not object.
A consent source that fails answers :denied. One that raises, throws,
exits or returns anything but those three atoms — or a consent_source that
is not a {module, function} pair — could not say whether the visitor
refused, so it is read as a refusal rather than as "no answer", which
unless_objected would collect from. It is logged once per node, naming the
source. A source that cleanly returns :unknown is taken at its word.
When the answer applies. It is read from the request, so it is as fresh as
the last page load. A LiveView cannot see cookies: the plug notes the answer
in the session, and it holds for live navigation until the next full page
load. The Legal banner reloads on withdrawal by default; keep that option
on when using these rules. A host consent tool must also force a full page
reload after changing an answer, including withdrawal; a LiveView navigation
or reconnect alone does not refresh the session note. The note is all a LiveView knows, so the
plug must run after :fetch_session: a session with no note is read as a
visitor who objected and has not answered, and nothing that waits for an
answer is collected on LiveViews until the plug has written one. The client script re-asks the server the
moment the banner reports a decision, so device measurements and a recording
can start on the page where the visitor said yes. Changes to consent rules
and the selected category are applied to open LiveViews and their delayed
leaves; a yes to the previous category does not allow the new one. Nothing
collected before a yes is held back for later — there is no queue to flush.
web_analytics_respect_dnt is separate and blunter: while it is on, a browser
sending DNT or Sec-GPC is not tracked under any rule, a yes in the banner
included. The plug notes that in the session for LiveViews too, and takes the
note back on the first request that no longer carries the signal.
What visitors are told. The module declares what it is collecting right
now (PhoenixKitWebAnalytics.data_collection/0), following the settings: each
kind with its rule, what exactly is kept, and for how long. The Legal module
lists that under the matching toggle of its banner and in the Cookie Policy it
generates. The module sets no cookie of its own and writes no storage. While
a rule waits for an answer, the visitor's answer is noted in the site's own
session cookie (the note above); that is declared too, under the measurement
entry's storage.
Data growth and retention
This is the one PhoenixKit table that grows with traffic rather than content. An hourly background pass:
- rolls up each completed day into per-site totals and per-day breakdowns (pages, sources, devices, events … — the 5,000 most visited values per breakdown and day; tracked with a "rolled up through" date, and re-rolled in the three hours after the day ends to catch late hits), then
- prunes raw events past the retention window (365 days by default;
0disables pruning), in batches, and never past the last rolled-up day, and recordings past theirs (30 days by default).
One pass runs at a time across all nodes (a database lock), "Run now" in Settings included.
Reports read finished days from those rollups and only today from raw events, so a year's report costs about what a day's does, and pruned days keep their breakdowns. Every list pages (visits, pages, open pages, a visit's timeline), and report results are cached for 30 seconds so a busy day's raw slice is aggregated at most once per interval.
Performance
The request process does a method/path check, one ETS read for settings, and
register_before_send/2. Enrichment, session stitching and the insert happen
in a supervised task after the response is on its way out. The task
supervisor is capped (20 concurrent writes by default,
config :phoenix_kit_web_analytics, max_concurrent_writes: n); under a flood
hits are dropped rather than queued, so analytics never exhausts your database
pool. LiveView interactions cost one attach_hook call and a message.
Configuration
Settings (editable from the admin Settings page, no redeploy):
| Key | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
web_analytics_enabled |
false |
Master switch (the module toggle) |
web_analytics_respect_dnt |
true |
Skip visitors sending DNT / Sec-GPC |
web_analytics_track_bots |
false |
Record automated traffic |
web_analytics_detect_bots |
true |
Also spot bots by behaviour (automation flag, speed, no JavaScript) |
web_analytics_exclude_paths |
/admin* … |
Path patterns to ignore (trailing * = prefix) |
web_analytics_session_timeout_minutes |
30 |
Inactivity gap that ends a session |
web_analytics_retention_days |
365 |
Age at which raw events are rolled up and deleted |
web_analytics_track_interactions |
true |
Record LiveView events as interactions |
web_analytics_ignore_events |
validate |
LiveView event names never recorded |
web_analytics_event_params |
tab, view, section, step, sort, filter, period |
Event parameters whose short values are kept |
web_analytics_client_script |
false |
Store the client script's clicks, scroll depth and exits |
web_analytics_beacon_enabled |
false |
Accept page views from the beacon / pixel endpoints |
web_analytics_recording |
false |
Record visits (pointer, clicks, hovers, scrolling) for replay |
web_analytics_recording_sample |
100 |
Percent of visitors recorded, decided per visitor per day |
web_analytics_recording_retention_days |
30 |
Age at which recordings are deleted |
web_analytics_exclude_internal_network |
true |
Leave internal-network traffic out of the statistics |
web_analytics_exclude_admin |
true |
Leave the site staff's visits out of the statistics |
web_analytics_exclude_admin_network |
true |
Leave visits from staff networks out of the statistics |
web_analytics_internal_roles |
Owner, Admin |
Roles whose holders are site staff (comma-separated; -, an emptied field, is no one) |
web_analytics_admin_network_hours |
24 |
How long a staff sign-in marks its network (0 = never) |
web_analytics_visitor_rotation |
daily |
How long a visitor ID lasts: daily, weekly, monthly, never |
web_analytics_store_ip |
off |
Keep the visitor's address: off, truncated, full |
web_analytics_store_user_agent |
false |
Keep the raw User-Agent |
web_analytics_store_headers |
false |
Keep the request headers of a visit's first page view |
web_analytics_store_network |
false |
Keep the network's ASN, owner and hosting flag (needs a resolver that returns them) |
web_analytics_store_signals |
false |
Keep the client script's device measurements and a device hash (needs the client script) |
web_analytics_consent_measurement |
always |
When visits are counted: always, consent, unless_objected |
web_analytics_consent_profile |
always |
The same, for what the store_ip / _user_agent / _headers / _network settings keep |
web_analytics_consent_device |
always |
The same, for device measurements |
web_analytics_consent_recording |
always |
The same, for session recordings |
web_analytics_consent_category |
analytics |
The consent category the four rules follow: analytics, marketing, preferences |
web_analytics_without_consent |
drop |
A page view that may not be counted: drop it, or count it anonymous (no visitor) |
web_analytics_alert_signups |
true |
Alert on new accounts |
web_analytics_alert_visitors |
false |
Alert on new visits (filtered by the keys below) |
web_analytics_alert_channels |
all | Channels a visitor alert fires for |
web_analytics_alert_paths |
any | Landing pages a visitor alert fires for |
web_analytics_alert_skip_users |
true |
No visitor alerts for signed-in users |
web_analytics_alert_max_per_hour |
20 |
Visitor alert cap (0 = none) |
web_analytics_alert_events |
none | Event / interaction names that alert |
Application config:
# An IP → location resolver; see PhoenixKitWebAnalytics.Geo
config :phoenix_kit_web_analytics, geo_resolver: MyApp.GeoIP
# Your own networks (offices, VPN): their visits are marked and left out of
# the statistics — see "Your own traffic". CIDR, IPv4 or IPv6.
config :phoenix_kit_web_analytics, internal_networks: ["203.0.113.0/24"]
# Concurrent background writes before hits are dropped.
config :phoenix_kit_web_analytics, max_concurrent_writes: 20
# How long report results are cached (ms); 0 turns the cache off.
config :phoenix_kit_web_analytics, report_cache_ms: 30_000
# Page views a minute from one visitor before it counts as a bot.
config :phoenix_kit_web_analytics, bot_pageviews_per_minute: 30
# Right now: how long a closed page waits for its reconnect before its exit
# is recorded, and how long a reloaded page's late-closing old connection is
# hidden before it counts as a second tab (ms).
config :phoenix_kit_web_analytics, presence_reconnect_grace_ms: 10_000
config :phoenix_kit_web_analytics, presence_supersede_ms: 30_000
trust_x_forwarded_for is deprecated and does nothing (a warning is logged
at start while it is set): the forwarded header from a private peer is always
read — see Behind a reverse proxy.
The collection endpoints read text/plain bodies (what navigator.sendBeacon
sends) themselves, capped at 16 KB (128 KB for a recording chunk). A body sent
as JSON is parsed by your endpoint's Plug.Parsers first, under its own
:length limit — keep that limit modest on a public site.
Behind a reverse proxy
The address is visitor-hash input, and stored only if you switch that on
(What is kept about a visitor). The plug, the
beacon and the LiveView hook read it the way PhoenixKit reads it for a login
(PhoenixKit.Utils.IpAddress):
- a public peer address is the visitor, and forwarded headers from it are ignored (anyone can send them);
- a private or loopback peer (
10/8,172.16/12,192.168/16,127/8,::1,fc00::/7) is a proxy, and the visitor is the last entry ofX-Forwarded-For— the one that proxy appended; a visitor can send their own header, but can't control what the proxy adds after it — thenX-Real-IPwhen there is no readableX-Forwarded-For; ::ffff:a.b.c.dcounts as the IPv4 address it carries.
Forwarded headers from a private peer are trusted with no configuration,
so the proxy must set or append X-Forwarded-For itself. One that only sets
X-Real-IP — nginx with just proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr —
passes the visitor's own X-Forwarded-For through untouched, and a visitor
can name any address; add
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;. The same
holds on an intranet where visitors have private addresses themselves and
reach the app directly: each of them can send the header.
A proxy or CDN with a public address in front of the app (a CDN
forwarding to the origin) is a public peer: its headers are ignored and
every visitor counts as one of its edge addresses. Rewrite remote_ip with
a RemoteIp plug — see Behind a CDN and a load
balancer.
Behind a reverse proxy that appends the port (e.g. Caddy {remote})
Some proxy configurations forward 203.0.113.7:51234 instead of
203.0.113.7 — Caddy with header_up X-Forwarded-For {remote} does. Such a
value is read too: an IPv4 address followed by :port, and a bracketed IPv6
address with or without one ([2001:db8::7]:443), lose the port. A bare IPv6
address is never cut — 2001:db8::1:443 is a valid address.
For LiveView, list :x_headers in the socket's connect_info (on both
transports, see Installation). Without it, a socket with a private or
loopback peer — a proxy, a container network, localhost in development —
has no way to name its visitor, so the hook records nothing for it — no
live navigation, interaction or "Right now" entry — and counts the skip;
Settings then warns, and the "no JavaScript" bot check pauses so the missed
visits aren't taken for bots. Add :x_headers to the endpoint first,
then deploy 0.5.0 or later.
The cleaner fix is on the proxy: forward the address without the port. In
Caddy that is {remote_host} instead of {remote}, or no
header_up X-Forwarded-For / X-Real-IP lines at all — Caddy 2.5 and later
sets X-Forwarded-For itself, without a port:
reverse_proxy app:4000 {
header_up X-Real-IP {remote_host}
}
Behind a CDN and a load balancer
With more than one proxy in front, the last X-Forwarded-For entry is the
nearest proxy's view of its client — the CDN, not the visitor. Rewrite
remote_ip before the tracking plug with a plug that walks the chain over
the proxies you trust — remote_ip:
plug RemoteIp, proxies: ["198.51.100.0/24"]
plug PhoenixKitWebAnalytics.Plug
A public remote_ip is taken as is.
Limitation: LiveView behind such a chain. A LiveView socket doesn't go
through plugs, so its address still comes from :x_headers by the rule
above — the CDN's edge, not the visitor. The page load and the live
connection then hash to different visitors: live navigations and
interactions count as separate visitors, and the page load, seeing no live
connection from its own visitor, is flagged a "no JavaScript" bot after 30
minutes (nothing was skipped, so the check doesn't pause). Until the socket
can walk the chain too, switch Spot bots by behaviour off in Settings
(web_analytics_detect_bots) on such a site.
Excluding specific requests
conn |> PhoenixKitWebAnalytics.Plug.skip() |> render("preview.html")
or, at install time:
plug PhoenixKitWebAnalytics.Plug, exclude: ["/healthz", "/internal*"]
exclude: applies to the plug's page views. The LiveView hook can't see plug
options, so a LiveView page to leave out entirely goes in the
web_analytics_exclude_paths setting, which both honour.
Database
Five tables, created by mix phoenix_kit.update through the module's own
versioned migration chain (PhoenixKitWebAnalytics.Migrations, V01–V10),
UUIDv7 primary keys, prefix-safe for named-schema installs:
phoenix_kit_web_analytics_events— one row per hit, append-onlyphoenix_kit_web_analytics_daily_stats— per-day, per-site totalsphoenix_kit_web_analytics_daily_dims— per-day breakdowns (V04)phoenix_kit_web_analytics_recordings— session-recording chunks (V06)phoenix_kit_web_analytics_visitor_profiles— what is kept about a visitor, one row per visitor ID; empty unless a setting asks for it (V09, V10)
On a busy install with a large events table, build V03's, V05's and V07's
indexes CONCURRENTLY before upgrading — the migration then skips them; the
statements are in the PhoenixKitWebAnalytics.Migrations docs.
Translations
Every string goes through the module's own gettext backend
(PhoenixKitWebAnalytics.Gettext), with English, Estonian and Russian
catalogues in priv/gettext.
License
MIT