Pirsch Documentation

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Website Integration ​

Our JavaScript snippet is the easiest way to integrate pirsch into your website. If you don't want to load JavaScript on your website, have a look at our server-side integration and custom domains.

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Looking for code? Check out our demo repository on GitHub!

Adding Pirsch to Your Website ​

Once you have created your account, you can add Pirsch to your website.

  1. Open the dashboard and click on the plus icon in the menu.
  2. Enter the hostname of your website (such as example.com), the subdomain, and select a time zone.
  3. Click on Create Dashboard.
  4. Select and open your preferred integration.
  5. Copy and paste the JavaScript snippet into the <head> section of your website.

Code Snippet

And you're done! Your website is now sending traffic to Pirsch.

Note that only page views for the hostname you enter will be accepted. A pageview for sub.example.com will not be accepted if you've configured example.com. They are considered completely different websites and you will need to add a new dashboard or create an additional domain for them.

You can also create rollup views to combine data from multiple sites.

The script also tracks programmatic URL changes by default. This is useful if your site is a single page application (SPA) or if you use anchors. You can disable this behavior by adding the data-disable-history parameter to the script. This also works for the pirsch-extended.js script. Certain features might not work on SPAs. Check the troubleshooting article to learn more.

Client Hints improve the accuracy of the statistics collected for you. Make sure to forward them to our service.

Choosing a Scripts ​

There are currently four scripts, each with a different purpose.

  • pirsch-extended.js is the full integration and combines all the other scripts. It automatically tracks outbound link clicks, file downloads, and allows tracking of custom events through HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
  • pirsch.js is the basic integration and only tracks page views.
  • pirsch-events.js tracks only programmatic events through JavaScript. This is usually combined with pirsch.js so that you have two very lightweight scripts on your site.
  • pirsch-sessions.js automatically renews sessions. This can be useful for long running sessions without page switching.

Testing the Integration ​

Please refer to the troubleshooting article.

Including and Excluding Pages ​

The snippet provides a very flexible way to include or exclude pages. You can exclude one or more pages by specifying the data-exclude attribute. The content is a list of regular expressions used to filter pages.

html
<script defer type="text/javascript" src="https://api.pirsch.io/pirsch.js" 
    id="pirschjs" 
    data-code="YOUR_IDENTIFICATION_CODE"
    data-exclude="\/exact\/match,\/exclude\/page\/(en|de)\/.*"></script>
<script defer type="text/javascript" src="https://api.pirsch.io/pirsch.js" 
    id="pirschjs" 
    data-code="YOUR_IDENTIFICATION_CODE"
    data-exclude="\/exact\/match,\/exclude\/page\/(en|de)\/.*"></script>

This example will match the page /exact/match and any page starting with /exclude/page/en/ or /exclude/page/de/.

Please always validate your expressions before using them and make sure you don't see any errors in the browser console. Special regex characters must be escaped. For a simple single page filter use a pattern like \/your\/page.

data-include can be used to whitelist pages. With whitelisting, only pages that match a pattern in the list will send a page view. The blacklist still applies.

Enabling/Disabling Certain Features ​

It's possible to enable or disable certain features of the scripts. To enable or disable a feature, simply add an attribute to the script tag.

  • data-disable-query removes all query parameters from the URL, including UTM parameters.
  • data-disable-referrer will removes the referrer.
  • data-disable-resolution removes the screen resolution (width and height).
  • data-disable-history disables the tracking of programmatic URL changes as page views (like PWAs for example).
  • data-disable-page-views disables the collection of page views (pirsch-extended.js only).
  • data-disable-outbound-links disables the tracking of outbound link clicks (pirsch-extended.js only).
  • data-disable-downloads disables the tracking of file downloads (pirsch-extended.js only).
  • data-enable-sessions enables session extension (pirsch-extended.js only).

Here is an example:

html
<script defer type="text/javascript" src="https://api.pirsch.io/pirsch.js" 
    id="pirschjs" 
    data-code="YOUR_IDENTIFICATION_CODE"
    data-disable-query></script>
<script defer type="text/javascript" src="https://api.pirsch.io/pirsch.js" 
    id="pirschjs" 
    data-code="YOUR_IDENTIFICATION_CODE"
    data-disable-query></script>

Ignoring Your Own Page Views ​

You can disable this integration by setting the DNT (Do Not Track) header to 1 in your browser, or by adding a value called disable_pirsch to your local storage.

For the latter option, open the developer tools (usually F12 or Ctrl + Shift + I) in your browser and navigate to the web storage tab. Click on local storage and add a new value disable_pirsch and 1 as the value. After reloading the page, no page views or events (if you also use the event script) should be sent to Pirsch.

Testing Pirsch Locally ​

The scripts will ignore any requests made on localhost. If you want to override this behavior, e.g. for testing, you can add the data-dev attribute. The host names must match. If you are testing on localhost, rewrite the hostname with the `data-dev' attribute like this

html
<script defer type="text/javascript" src="https://api.pirsch.io/pirsch.js" 
    id="pirschjs" 
    data-code="YOUR_IDENTIFICATION_CODE"
    data-dev="example.com"></script>
<script defer type="text/javascript" src="https://api.pirsch.io/pirsch.js" 
    id="pirschjs" 
    data-code="YOUR_IDENTIFICATION_CODE"
    data-dev="example.com"></script>

In this case, the hostname you've configured on the Dashboard is example.com. So you need to add data-dev="example.com" to rewrite the hostname.

Resetting the Identification Code ​

Your site is identified by the host name from which the request is made and an identification code. The identification code must be placed inside the JavaScript snippet. If you ever need to recreate the code, go to the Settings page for your site and generate a new one. You'll then need to replace the old code.

html
<script defer type="text/javascript" src="https://api.pirsch.io/pirsch.js" 
    id="pirschjs" 
    data-code="YOUR_IDENTIFICATION_CODE"></script>
<script defer type="text/javascript" src="https://api.pirsch.io/pirsch.js" 
    id="pirschjs" 
    data-code="YOUR_IDENTIFICATION_CODE"></script>

Privacy Policy ​

If required in your country, you can use our template to add a paragraph to your privacy policy about the use of Pirsch.