Display Google Analytics data on my web site?

Question

I'm trying to figure out a way to display data collected from Google Analytics on my web site. I'm using NopCommerce, and I want to display this information/statistics in a view in the Admin Section.

There might be many ways to achieve this, and after searching the web I found some examples using JavaScript, but I couldn't find a good tutorial for this.

I have also looked into integrating Google Analytics with C#, and I found this example: http://biasecurities.com/2012/02/using-the-google-analytics-api-with-asp-net-mvc/#comment-1310 A demo project can be downloaded from GitHub here: https://github.com/jgeurts/Analytics-Example

However the demo project doesn't seem to work as the google URL (https://www.google.com/analytics/feeds/accounts/default) is no longer in use.

As I'm using a MVC application it would be preferable to make this happen by applying the Google Analytics logic within a Controller and displaying it in a view. Or something like that.

Google provides a query tool to experiment with here, so it shouldn't be to hard extracting data from Google Analytics and display the data on the website: https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/explorer/

Has anyone been able to successfully display Google Analytics data on their website?

Answer 1

In case some one else is having the same problem here's what I did and it pretty much answers the question.

1.

Here is the basic code for a API client that access data from Google Analytics via your Google Service Account. https://developers.google.com/api-client-library/dotnet/guide/aaa_oauth#service_account

In order to make this application work you need to have several things ready before you start coding.

*Google Analytics Account - once registered a "tracker" code is generated for you to put on each webpage you want to track. You may not see any statistics right away and it can take up to 24h before any statistics are shown in the Google Analytics Dashboard.

An OAuth Authorisation (API-Key) with CLIENT_ID, CLIENT SECRET and EMAIL ADRESS (This is not your normal email but a service account email that is created for you when you make an OAuth Authorisation). console.developers.google.com/

A serverkey, can also be created here: console.developers.google.com/. You can also create a browser key, haven't bothered with that though and don't know what it does.

Finally you need a certificate key. Your application will only be able to access your Google Analytics account by using the key and credentials. The key is an encrypted p.12 file. You can find the key in https://code.google.com/apis/console/.

Here is a guide for the key: http://www.pimcore.org/wiki/display/PIMCORE/Setup+Google+Analytics+Reporting+with+OAuth2+Service+Accounts+(since+1.4.6)

2.

Now that you have all keys and credentials you need it is time to start looking at the code I linked in "1". Here is the basic for it again: https://developers.google.com/api-client-library/dotnet/guide/aaa_oauth#service_account

Create a console application and implement the code above.

Note: your not making a "Google Plus service" so you have to change those parts for "AnalyticsService". Go to manage nuget and install packages:

• Google Apis Core Library
• Google Apis Client Library
• Google Apis Auth Client Library
• Google Apis Analytics.v3 Library
• Google GData Client (This provides properties used to query data, metrics, demensions etc)
• Google GData Extensions Library
• Analytics

Might forgot something but here are the namespaces I use:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

using System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates;
using Google.Apis.Auth.OAuth2;
using Google.Apis.Services;
using Google.Apis.Analytics.v3;

3

Finally, here's is some of my code. Note I'm creating a new Analytics as supposed to "new ServiceAccountCredentials" as in the code from Google. That's the main difference: Retrieve data from Google Analytics API with .NET, multiple metrics?

With this I'm able to access and query data from Google Analytics account. The best part is that you don't have to log in to Google for this as the key and credentials gives you access to the account data directly.

I will migrate this code to MVC now I might make an update later on for how to implement this Analytics client in Mvc.