How to set up Google Analytics for React-Router?

Question

I'm trying set up Google Analytics on my react site, and have come across a few packages, but none of which has the kind of set up that I have in terms of examples. Was hoping someone could shed some light on this.

The package I'm looking at is, react-ga.

My render method on my index.js looks like this.

React.render((
<Router history={createBrowserHistory()}>
    <Route path="/" component={App}>
        <IndexRoute component={Home} onLeave={closeHeader}/>
        <Route path="/about" component={About} onLeave={closeHeader}/>
        <Route path="/gallery" component={Gallery} onLeave={closeHeader}/>
        <Route path="/contact-us" component={Contact} onLeave={closeHeader}>
            <Route path="/contact-us/:service" component={Contact} onLeave={closeHeader}/>
        </Route>
        <Route path="/privacy-policy" component={PrivacyPolicy} onLeave={closeHeader} />
        <Route path="/feedback" component={Feedback} onLeave={closeHeader} />
    </Route>
    <Route path="*" component={NoMatch} onLeave={closeHeader}/>
</Router>), document.getElementById('root'));

Answer 1

Note if you're using the react-router-dom package from react-router-4 you can handle this like so:

import { Router, Route } from 'react-router-dom';
import { createBrowserHistory } from 'history';

const history = createBrowserHistory();
const initGA = (history) => {
  (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','https://www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');

  ga('create', 'YOUR_IDENTIFIER_HERE', 'auto');
  ga('send', 'pageview');

  history.listen((location) => {
    console.log("tracking page view: " + location.pathname);
    ga('send', 'pageview', location.pathname);
  });
};

initGA(history);

class App extends Component { //eslint-disable-line
  render() {
    return
      (<Router history={history} >
         <Route exact path="/x" component={x} />
         <Route exact path="/y" component={y} />
       </Router>)
  }
}

Note that this requires you to install the history package (npm install history). This is already a dependency of react-router-dom so you're not adding any page weight here.

Also note: It is not possible to use the BrowserRouter component AND instrument your ga tracking this way. This is okay because the BrowserRouter component is just a really thin wrapper around the Router object. We recreate the BrowserRouter functionality here with <Router history={history}> where const history = createBrowserHistory();.

Answer 2

here is a simplest way to track all paths with some work arounds:

npm i --save history react-ga

create a file history.js

import { createBrowserHistory } from "history"
import ReactGA from "react-ga"

ReactGA.initialize(process.env.REACT_APP_GA)

const history = createBrowserHistory()
history.listen((location) => {
    ReactGA.pageview(location.pathname)
})

// workaround for initial visit
if (window.performance && (performance.navigation.type === performance.navigation.TYPE_NAVIGATE)) {
    ReactGA.pageview("/")
}

export default history

and then import it to where is set your Router

import history from "./history"

...

class Route extends Component {
render() {
    return (
        <Router history={history}>
            <Switch>
              <Route path="/" exact component={HomePage} />
              ...
            </Switch>
        </Router>
    )
}

export default Route

References:

Gustavo Gonzalez | medium.com

History | GitHub