Important

This article relates to both journy.io's SDKs and Twilio Segment SDKs.

Check out also our journy.io developers documentation -- journy.io API documentation

Topics

1 Important
2 Getting started
3 Basic tracking methods
- 3.1 Identify
- 3.2 Group
- 3.3 Track
- 3.4 Page
4 Configuration

journy.io’s Ruby library lets you record data from your platform, from your Ruby code.

All of journy.io’s server-side libraries are built for high-performance, so you can use them in your web server controller code. This library uses an internal queue to make identify and track calls non-blocking and fast. It also batches messages and flushes asynchronously to journy.io’s servers.

Getting started

Make sure you’re using a version of Ruby that’s 14 or higher.

Run the relevant command to add journy.io’s Ruby library module to your package.json.
gem install analytics-ruby
Initialize the Analytics constructor the module exposes with your journy.io SDK connector Write Key, like so:
require 'segment/analytics' Analytics = Segment::Analytics.new({ write_key: 'YOUR_WRITE_KEY', host: 'analyze.journy.io', path: '/backend/v1/batch' })

Be sure to replace YOUR_WRITE_KEY with your actual Write Key which you can find in journy.io by navigating to: Connections > API/SDK Connector and selecting the source tab and going to the Ruby tab.

This creates an instance of Analytics that you can use to send data to journy.io for your project. The default initialization settings are production-ready and queue 20 messages before sending any requests.

There is an option in journy.io to set a proxy ("Use proxy domain") so traffic flows through your own domain. In that case, host will have another value, pointing to your own domain.

Basic tracking methods

The basic tracking methods below serve as the building blocks of your journy.io tracking. They include Identify, Group, Track, and Page.

These methods correspond with those used in the journy.io Spec. The documentation on this page explains how to use these methods in Ruby.

Identify

For any of the different methods described on this page, you can replace the properties and traits in the code samples with variables that represent the data collected.

identify lets you tie a user to their actions and record traits about them. It includes a unique User ID and/or anonymous ID, and any optional traits you know about them.

journy.io recommends that you make an identify call:

After a user first registers
After a user logs in
When a user updates their info (for example, they change or add a new address)

Example of an identify call for an identified user Elon Musk:

Analytics.identify({ 
   user_id: 'abc123', # Elon Musk — unique Id from database
   traits: { 
      firstname: 'Elon', 
      lastname: 'Musk'
      email: 'elon.musk@tesla.com',
      friends: 24 } 
})

The call above identifies Elon by his unique User ID (the one you know him by in your database), and labels him with the firstname, lastname, email, and friends traits.

The identify call has the following fields:

Field	Type	Description
`user_id`	String	ID for this user in your database. Optional if `anonymous_id` is provided.
`anonymous_id`	String	The ID associated with the user when you don’t know who they are. Optional if `user_id` is provided.
`traits`	Hash	A `Hash` of traits you know about the user. Things like: `email`, `firstname`, `lastname` or `friends`.
`context`, optional	Hash	A `Hash` that can include things like `user_agent` or `ip`.
`integrations`, optional	Hash	Specifies which destinations this should be sent to.
`timestamp`, optional	Time	Represents the time when the action took place. This is most useful if you’re importing historical data. If the `identify` just happened, leave it blank and we’ll use the server’s time.
`message_id`, optional	String	Unique identifier for each message that lets you find an individual message across the API.

Identifying users happen incremental: You can identify users with a subset of traits; and later make another identify call with another subset of traits. The result of both identify calls will be the union of all traits.

To delete a traits, you have to add them to the identify call with value null:

Find details on the identify method payload in journy.io’s Identify Spec.

Group

group lets you associate an identified user with a group. A group could be a company, organization, account, project or team! It also lets you record custom traits about the group, like industry or number of employees.

journy.io recommends that you make a group call:

After a user first registers, entering its company details.
After a user logs in. Make a group call for each account the user is part of.
When a user updates their info, make a group call for each account the user is part of.

Example group call, adding user Elon Musk to account Tesla, as an 'admin':

The group call has the following fields:

FIELDS	TYPE	DESCRIPTION
`user_id`	String	ID for this user in your database. Optional if `anonymous_id` is provided.
`anonymous_id`	String	The ID associated with the user when you don’t know who they are. Optional if `user_id` is provided.
`group_id`	String	The ID of the group.
`traits` optional	Hash	A hash of traits you know about the group. For a company, they might be things like `name`, `address`, or `phone`.
`context`, optional	Hash	A `Hash` that can include things like `user_agent` or `ip`.
`integrations`, optional	Hash	Specifies which destinations this should be sent to.
`timestamp`, optional	Time	Represents the time when the action took place. This is most useful if you’re importing historical data. If the `identify` just happened, leave it blank and we’ll use the server’s time.
`message_id`, optional	String	Unique identifier for each message that lets you find an individual message across the API.

To identify a group, without adding a user, you can use anonymousId with the same value of the groupId. It goes like this:

Group-calling accounts happen incremental: You can identify users with a subset of traits; and later make another identify call with another subset of traits. The result of both identify calls will be the union of all traits.

To delete a traits, you have to add them to the group call with a null reference:

Find more details about group, including the group payload, in the journy.io Spec.

Track

track lets you record the actions your users perform, optionally within the context of an account. Every action triggers what we call an “event”, which can also have associated event metadata.

You’ll want to track events that are indicators of success for your site, like Signed Up, Item Purchased or Article Bookmarked.

To get started, we recommend tracking just a few important events. You can always add more later!

Example identified track call by a user Elon Musk:

B2B example identified track call by a user Elon Musk in the context of account Tesla, back on Dec 12th 2015:

This example track call tells us that Elon Musk triggered the Car Sold event with a revenue of $39999.99 and chose your hypothetical ‘200-day’ shipping, back on Dec 12th 2015.

track event metadata ( properties ) can be anything you want to record. In this case, revenue and shipping method.

The track call has the following fields:

Field	Type	Description
`user_id`	String	ID for this user in your database. Optional if `anonymous_id` is provided.
`anonymous_id`	String	The ID associated with the user when you don’t know who they are. Optional if `user_id` is provided.
`event`	String	The name of the event you’re tracking. We recommend human-readable names like Song Played or Status Updated.
`properties`, optional	Hash	A `Hash` of properties for the event. If the event was Product Added to their cart, it might have properties like `price` or `product`.
`context`, optional	Hash	A `Hash` that can include things like `user_agent` or `ip`.
`integrations`, optional	Hash	Specifies which destinations this should be sent to.
`timestamp`, optional	Time	Represents the time when the action took place. This is most useful if you’re importing historical data. If the `identify` just happened, leave it blank and we’ll use the server’s time.
`message_id`, optional	String	Unique identifier for each message that lets you find an individual message across the API.

Find details on best practices in event naming as well as the track method payload in the journy.io Spec.

Page

The page method lets you record page views on your website, along with optional extra information about the page being viewed. It is also user to record screen views in your app/on your platform.

If you’re using our client-side set up in combination with the Ruby library, page calls are already tracked for you by default. However, if you want to record your own page views manually and aren’t using our client-side library, read on!

Example page call, where a user Elon Musk visits the pricing page:

B2B example page call, where a user Elon Musk visits the pricing page, when being in account Tesla, back on Dec 12th 2015:

The page call has the following fields:

Field	Type	Description
`user_id`	String	ID for this user in your database. Optional if `anonymous_id` is provided.
`anonymous_id`	String	The ID associated with the user when you don’t know who they are. Optional if `user_id` is provided.
`name`	String	The name of the page, for example Signup or Home.
`category` optional	String	The category of the page. Useful for things like ecommerce where many pages might live under a larger category. Note: if you only pass one string to `page` we assume it’s a `name`, not a `category`. You must include a `name` if you want to send a `category`.
`properties`, optional	Hash	A `Hash` of properties for the page.
`context`, optional	Hash	A `Hash` that can include things like `user_agent` or `ip`.
`integrations`, optional	Hash	Specifies which destinations this should be sent to.
`timestamp`, optional	Time	Represents the time when the action took place. This is most useful if you’re importing historical data. If the `identify` just happened, leave it blank and we’ll use the server’s time.
`message_id`, optional	String	Unique identifier for each message that lets you find an individual message across the API.

Find details on the page payload in the journy.io Spec.

Configuration

The second argument to the new function is an optional list of settings to configure the module.

FIELD	TYPE	DESCRIPTION
`on_error` optional	Proc	A handler which is called whenever errors are returned from the API. Useful for debugging and first time destinations.
`max_queue_size` optional	FixNum	The max number of messages to put in the queue before refusing to queue more (defaults to `10,000`).
`batch_size` optional	FixNum	The max number of events/identifies to send in a single batch (defaults to `100`). The API servers will not respond to messages over a certain size, so `100` is a safe default.
`stub` optional	TrueClass\|FalseClass	If true, the requests don’t hit the server and are stubbed to be successful (defaults to `false`).

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