Configuration

Using pytracking with Django

pytracking comes with View classes that you can extend and that handle open and click tracking link request.

For example, the pytracking.django.OpenTrackingView will return a 1x1 transparent PNG pixel for GET requests. The pytracking.django.ClickTrackingView will return a 302 redirect response to the tracked URL.

Both views will return a 404 response if the tracking URL is invalid. Both views will capture the user agent and the user ip of the request. This information will be available in TrackingResult.request_data.

You can extend both views to determine what to do with the tracking result (e.g., call a webhook or submit a task to a celery queue). Finally, you can encode your configuration parameters in your Django settings or you can compute them in your view.

To use the django feature, you must install pytracking with pytracking[django].

Configuration parameters in Django settings

You can provide default configuration parameters in your Django settings by adding this key in your settings file:

PYTRACKING_CONFIGURATION = {
    "webhook_url": "http://requestb.in/123",
    "base_open_tracking_url": "http://tracking.domain.com/open/",
    "base_click_tracking_url": "http://tracking.domain.com/click/",
    "default_metadata": {"analytics_key": "123456"},
    "append_slash": True
}

Extending default views

from pytracking import Configuration
from pytracking.django import OpenTrackingView, ClickTrackingView

class MyOpenTrackingView(OpenTrackingView):

    def notify_tracking_event(self, tracking_result):
        # Override this method to do something with the tracking result.
        # tracking_result.request_data["user_agent"] and
        # tracking_result.request_data["user_ip"] contains the user agent
        # and ip of the client.
        send_tracking_result_to_queue(tracking_result)

    def notify_decoding_error(self, exception, request):
        # Called when the tracking link cannot be decoded
        # Override this to, for example, log the exception
        logger.log(exception)

    def get_configuration(self):
        # By defaut, fetchs the configuration parameters from the Django
        # settings. You can return your own Configuration object here if
        # you do not want to use Django settings.
        return Configuration()


class MyClickTrackingView(ClickTrackingView):

    def notify_tracking_event(self, tracking_result):
        # Override this method to do something with the tracking result.
        # tracking_result.request_data["user_agent"] and
        # tracking_result.request_data["user_ip"] contains the user agent
        # and ip of the client.
        send_tracking_result_to_queue(tracking_result)

    def notify_decoding_error(self, exception, request):
        # Called when the tracking link cannot be decoded
        # Override this to, for example, log the exception
        logger.log(exception)

    def get_configuration(self):
        # By defaut, fetchs the configuration parameters from the Django
        # settings. You can return your own Configuration object here if
        # you do not want to use Django settings.
        return Configuration()

URLs configuration

Add this to your urls.py file:

urlpatterns = [
    url(
        "^open/(?P<path>[\w=-]+)/$", MyOpenTrackingView.as_view(),
        name="open_tracking"),
    url(
        "^click/(?P<path>[\w=-]+)/$", MyClickTrackingView.as_view(),
        name="click_tracking"),
]