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Update on CakePHP Google Analytics API/Model

Posted on 30/5/06 by Felix Geisendörfer

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I just recieved an e-mail from the Google Analytics support which basically says that my e-mail has been forwarded to the engineering people @ Google. But read for yourself:

Hello Felix,

Thank you for your email. I understand that you are interested in knowing
specifics of using custom built APIs with Google Analytics. I have
forwarded your email to our engineering and I am waiting to hear from
them. I will let you know their stand once I have some information.

For additional questions regarding e-commerce, goals, filters, tracking
and setup questions, please visit the Analytics Help Center at
http://www.google.com/support/analytics. If you're unable to find an
answer to your question on our site, please feel free to reply to this
email.

Sincerely,

Gauri
Analytics Support

*************************
Share your knowledge and learn from others at the Google Analytics Help
forum: http://www.google.com/analytics/analyticshelp

That is not a huge step, but having an actual person answering a support question at Google makes it look promising. And since it doesn't seem like there is some "no-custom-apis-allowed" rule at Google I think it'll be fine to post a link to an online demo where you can see some Analytics Statistics from thinkingphp.org:

Online Demo: http://www.fg-webdesign.de/google-analytics/analytics/profiles
(I've posted this link on #cakephp before so some of you might reagonize the page)

So let's hope I'll get a green light the next couple days so I can release the source code to the public (under MIT license, of course).

 
&nsbp;

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Andrew Johnstone said on Jun 08, 2006:

Hi,

Did you manage to release the source code?

Thanks

Andy

Felix Geisendörfer said on Jun 08, 2006:

I didn't get an ok from Google so far, so stay tuned.

Murfy  said on Jun 11, 2006:

Well, I don't see why you shouldn't release it, the F.A.Q. says nothing about API's, and there are several GMail API's available, and since they are allowed, this one should be allowed too?

Felix Geisendörfer said on Jun 11, 2006:

Murfy: I think I'll release it the next couple of days for the reasons you just mentioned, as well as for the fact that there is a Google Analytics Wordpress Plugin and the guy who made it didn't get any problems with google so far. Stay tuned.

Murfy  said on Jun 14, 2006:

Great :) I'll call the president, you should receive a medal :)

[...] I already talked about my CakePHP implementation of a Google Analytics API in some of my previous posts, and I also asked Google to clarify the legal status of such code. Almost a month has passed, and besides the initial we'll contact you about it again e-mail, I didn't hear anything from Google. [...]

[...] I already talked about my CakePHP implementation of a Google Analytics API in some of my previous posts, and I also asked Google to clarify the legal status of such code. Almost a month has passed, and besides the initial we'll contact you about it again e-mail, I didn't hear anything from Google. [...]

Sampsa  said on Jun 15, 2007:

It's been a few days, but any news? (:

Felix Geisendörfer said on Jun 15, 2007:

Sampsa: On what?

Chad Wagner said on Jul 23, 2007:

Hi There. I have been using the Analytics Api successfully for 6 months, but beginning July 23rd, 2007 $this->GoogleAnalytics->getReport(...) returns an empty string. As you may know, google recently updated their user interface, and as a result they published that the old interface would not be available after July 17th, 2007.

Felix, would you pretty please look into this. I am digging through the code as well, and will let you know if I figure out where the data parsing stops working, as I know that your API relies on the Analytics UI and the pages that were available in the previous version.

I may be wrong, but is there anyone else? Will keep you up to date if I find a solution.

[...] Note: This data source uses web scraping. This means that Google could easily break it by making changes to the infrastructure of Google Analytics again. I also haven't heard back from google about their legal views on this technique since Late May 2006, but so far I haven't heard about Google approaching any vendors providing similar access to their service using web scraping either, which is a good sign. [...]

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