search

plausible / plausible-tracker

Frontend library to interact with Plausible Analytics
https://github.com/plausible/plausible-tracker
MIT License
214 stars 46 forks source link

Add functionality to use navigator.sendBeacon #45

Closed A5rocks closed 1 year ago

A5rocks commented 2 years ago

Description

Use a better method of analytics posting.

Related Issue

Fixes #16.

Types of changes

Checklist:

I think a followup to this would be using navigator.sendBeacon unless callback is passed. I would be OK with adding that into this.

A5rocks commented 1 year ago

@ukutaht Hello! Just making sure you've seen this PR. Do you have any opinions for whether navigator.sendBeacon should be the default (as mentioned in #16 or at the end of my PR explanation)?

Additionally you need to allow (approve?) the workflow to run :P

ukutaht commented 1 year ago

Hi!

We have considered it but have decided against using sendBeacon at this time. Sorry :/

A5rocks commented 1 year ago

Alright, thanks.

kotx commented 1 year ago

We have considered it but have decided against using sendBeacon at this time. Sorry :/

@ukutaht Are there any reasons for this? Just curious :)

ukutaht commented 1 year ago

The main reason is that we don't currently have team capacity to evaluate this change properly. We'd need to evaluate this approach before choosing to adopt it.

Adding sendBeacon with progressive enhancement will certainly do the following:

  1. Increases JS payload size
  2. Make the script more complicated 2.1 Harder to use and understand 2.2. More opportunities for errors 2.3 Harder to maintain over time

In order to accept long-term maintenance of this complexity, strong arguments must be made. The main pieces of data I'm looking for are:

  1. How much bigger does the JS payload get
  2. What's the % increase/decrease in reliability when using sendBeacon? 2.1 Need to test with different audiences as adblockers set navigator.sendBeacon = function() {}

These two numbers should give us good enough understanding to make a decision.

lewisakura commented 1 year ago

As someone who also desires this feature it's a little disappointing to see this closed and I'm sure other people are too.

  1. Increases JS payload size
  2. Make the script more complicated 2.1 Harder to use and understand 2.2. More opportunities for errors 2.3 Harder to maintain over time

Whilst I understand these points being a concern, the PR itself is about 5 extra lines of code, of which the majority is just adding the new useSendBeacon parameter. I wouldn't consider this extra complexity, personally, just extra flexibility to those who desire it, especially since the parameter is optional. Also, the error opportunities would most likely be the fault of the browser's implementation of sendBeacon, less so any change this PR creates. Maintenance-wise, with the way it's implemented, it shouldn't really need any.

  1. How much bigger does the JS payload get

Using yarn build:module, the built request.js file increases from 3,319 bytes to 3,710 bytes (~11.7%). Considering this also includes the new code comments, when minified I imagine this will barely be a dent in the overall bundle size. I'm aware Plausible is trying to be as lightweight as possible, but I believe that missing out on this feature for a (relatively) small increase in size is a bit extreme.

  1. What's the % increase/decrease in reliability when using sendBeacon? 2.1 Need to test with different audiences as adblockers set navigator.sendBeacon = function() {}

The reliability would actually be increased. I don't have percents for you, but considering sendBeacon's purpose it would pretty much guarantee an event would be sent even after they navigate away from the page. It wouldn't be any less reliable than the current method. Regarding adblocking, I've experienced Plausible being adblocked on a few that I've tried so it's not much of a concern here if they no-op sendBeacon.

earthboundkid commented 1 year ago

FWIW, I'm evaluating Plausible for my company and using sendBeacon is one of our requirements. I'm just going to rewrite the JS myself to make it work. The flipside of Plausible's JS being 3KB is you can rewrite it yourself in an afternoon.

A5rocks commented 1 year ago

If you do end up rewriting it and decide it's good enough to share, mind doing so? We were going to use a rewritten version but decided that would be too much work! (I still have our untested version on disk... heh. It's for some time in the future, I suppose.)

earthboundkid commented 1 year ago

@A5rocks https://github.com/spotlightpa/poor-richard/commit/39585915752a0b3338c3d442b440c7f029780156