Google Analytics Issue

Question

I was looking over a friends script and he used the Google Analytics tracking code :

var _gaq = [
 ['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXXXX-X'],
 ['_trackPageview']
 ];
 (function(d, t) {
 var g = d.createElement(t),
 s = d.getElementsByTagName(t)[0];
 g.src = ('https:' == location.protocol ? '//ssl' : '//www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
 s.parentNode.insertBefore(g, s)
 }(document, 'script'));

in this way ( or something similar ) :

var SOMEOBJECT = {
 _gaq : [],
 account_code : "",
 ...
 init : function() {
 ...
 }
 ...
 _gaq.push(SOMEOBJECT.account_code);
 ...
}

and some more code to create the same tracking code but in a different way ( because it needs to be reused on many other pages and for various stuff ).

The idea is that the scope variable _gaq didn't seem to be present in the console, so Analytics didn't received any data. So what could be going wrong ? Sorry for not having more code, but this is from what I remember and I was very curios why it didn't work (:

• roel: I don't understand the question. What are you trying to do and what isn't working?
• Roland: @roel ~ At this moment I don't have a lot of details on what is happening, I will have to tell my friend to send me the code so I can be more specific. But what I got is that the _gaq variable wasn't present in the DOM, if I tried to type in the console ._gaq it seemed like it wasn't declared even though it is. If I had an object instead of an array it worked fine, but the _gaq variable needs to be an array as it says in the google analytics tracking code

Answer 1

The first part of your code looks good... just a refactoring of the normal Google Analytics async code.

I'm not sure sure about the second part of your code... normally _gaq is a global object initialized something like

var _gaq = _gaq || [];

which initializes a global _gaq as an array if it hasn't been initialized already. Once the Google Analytics code is loaded, the array is replaced with an object containing a push method that executes commands.

Take a look at the docs for the _gaq Global Object and the push method.

• Roland: ~ precisely, the variable it's initializes like that var _gaq = _gaq || []; . But I'm not quite sure why he had problems with that, I suppose doing this _gaq : _gaq || [] it's not possible or semantically correct ?
• mike: The problem is you end up with two different _gaqs -- the global _gaq used by the analytics code & a second _gaq that's defined as a property of SOMEOBJECT.
• mike: What if you remove the _gaq initialization from the SOMEOBJECT code, and init it outside... something like: var _gaq = _gaq || []; var SOMEOBJECT = { ...
• Roland: That could work :) Though I'd prefer keeping it inside the object ... I'll try that to see what happens as soon as I get my hands on the whole code ( it's a big .net project so I can only run locally from the TFS )