Ahoy & Blazer analytics integration

Implementation Overview

This session involved implementing a complete analytics solution using two powerful Rails gems based on the excellent GoRails tutorial on Internal Metrics:

• Ahoy - For tracking user visits and events
• Blazer - For creating business intelligence dashboards and queries

Original Claude Voice Prompt

"Add ahoy and blazer to this project. Create some find_or_initialise queries to track referral by domain, visit by landing page, and new users by day. Only allow the logged in user to see a button to an access blazer if the currently logged in user matches an ID specified in config somewhere"

Git Commit Details

View the complete implementation that Claude provided in this commit:

Blazer Analytics Queries

Here are the three core analytics queries that we generated:

# Blazer queries for analytics
blazer_queries = [
  {
    name: "Referrals by Domain",
    description: "Track website visits grouped by referring domain",
    statement: <<~SQL
      SELECT 
        referring_domain,
        COUNT(*) as visits,
        COUNT(DISTINCT visitor_token) as unique_visitors,
        DATE(started_at) as visit_date
      FROM ahoy_visits 
      WHERE referring_domain IS NOT NULL 
        AND started_at >= date('now', '-30 days')
      GROUP BY referring_domain, DATE(started_at)
      ORDER BY visits DESC, visit_date DESC
      LIMIT 50
    SQL
  },
  {
    name: "Visits by Landing Page",
    description: "Track website visits grouped by landing page URL",
    statement: <<~SQL
      SELECT 
        landing_page,
        COUNT(*) as visits,
        COUNT(DISTINCT visitor_token) as unique_visitors,
        DATE(started_at) as visit_date
      FROM ahoy_visits 
      WHERE started_at >= date('now', '-30 days')
      GROUP BY landing_page, DATE(started_at)
      ORDER BY visits DESC, visit_date DESC
      LIMIT 50
    SQL
  },
  {
    name: "New Users by Day",
    description: "Track new user registrations grouped by day",
    statement: <<~SQL
      SELECT 
        DATE(created_at) as registration_date,
        COUNT(*) as new_users,
        COUNT(CASE WHEN google_user_id IS NOT NULL THEN 1 END) as google_signups,
        COUNT(CASE WHEN google_user_id IS NULL THEN 1 END) as email_signups
      FROM users 
      WHERE created_at >= date('now', '-30 days')
      GROUP BY DATE(created_at)
      ORDER BY registration_date DESC
    SQL
  }
]

blazer_queries.each do |query_attrs|
  query = Blazer::Query.find_or_initialize_by(name: query_attrs[:name])
  query.assign_attributes(query_attrs.merge(data_source: "main"))
  
  if query.save
    puts "✓ Created/Updated Blazer query: #{query.name}"
  else
    puts "✗ Error creating query #{query_attrs[:name]}: #{query.errors.full_messages.join(', ')}"
  end
end

Key Features Delivered

Implementation Highlights

🔧 Configuration

• Gems: Added ahoy_matey and blazer to Gemfile
• Database: SQLite configuration with environment-specific paths
• Authentication: Admin user ID configuration in config/initializers/admin_config.rb
• Routes: Mounted Blazer engine with proper authentication

🎯 Analytics Queries

Three business-critical queries implemented:

1. Referrals by Domain - Track traffic sources and marketing effectiveness
2. Visits by Landing Page - Monitor content performance and user behavior
3. New Users by Day - Track growth patterns and signup methods

🔐 Security Features

• Admin-only access to Blazer dashboard via user ID whitelist
• Analytics navigation button visible only to authorized users
• Builds on existing Google Sign-In authentication system - users must be authenticated first
• Comprehensive test coverage for authentication scenarios