Send Personalization Events with InstantSearch
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Introduction
InstantSearch allows developers to collect personalization events.
Click and conversion events sent can be used for personalization purposes as well. Some events however can only be used for personalization purposes.
Install the Search-Insights Library
To make use of analytics, the search-insights library has to be added to your application.
The Insights library can either be loaded via jsDelivr CDN or from your own static fileserver. If you choose the latter, you have to update the ALGOLIA_INSIGHTS_SRC variable to point to the URL of the file on your own fileserver. We recommend loading the library by adding this snippet in the <head> of your HTML file.
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<script>
var ALGOLIA_INSIGHTS_SRC = "https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/search-insights@1.1.1";
!function(e,a,t,n,s,i,c){e.AlgoliaAnalyticsObject=s,e.aa=e.aa||function(){
(e.aa.queue=e.aa.queue||[]).push(arguments)},i=a.createElement(t),c=a.getElementsByTagName(t)[0],
i.async=1,i.src=ALGOLIA_INSIGHTS_SRC,c.parentNode.insertBefore(i,c)
}(window,document,"script",0,"aa");
// Initialize library
aa('init', {
appId: 'YourApplicationID',
apiKey: 'YourSearchOnlyAPIKey'
});
</script>
jsDelivr is a third-party CDN. We are not able to provide support regarding third party services.
Insights events (click, conversion, view) used for analytics and/or personalization do not take immediate effect. The delay can range from 10 to 60 minutes depending on how long after the search they are sent. For precise times, see our page on when Insights events take effect.
Prepare the Events
userToken
By default, InstantSearch sends a default userToken when sending personalization events.
This default is based on the users’ IP address and will work for most cases.
However, if you have to identify a user across different devices, you can send a custom userToken along with the eventName, index and objectIDs parameters when sending personalization events.
To get the default userToken provided by InstantSearch, you can call the getUserToken method on the Insights library.
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let userToken = '';
window.aa('getUserToken', null, (err, algoliaUserToken) => {
if (err) {
console.error(err);
return;
}
userToken = algoliaUserToken;
});
objectID
When sending an event, you’ll need to provide the objectID. You can add it to the template of your hits in order to make it easily accessible for future reference by using data-tags, for example.
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search.addWidget(
instantsearch.widgets.hits({
container: '#hits',
templates: {
item(hit) {
return `
<article>
<h3>
${instantsearch.highlight({
attribute: 'name',
hit,
})}
</h3>
<button
class="button-click"
data-object-id="${hit.objectID}"
>
Details
</button>
<button
class="button-view"
data-object-id="${hit.objectID}"
>
View
</button>
<button
class="button-convert"
data-object-id="${hit.objectID}"
>
Add to cart
</button>
<article>
`;
},
}
})
);
Sending Click Events
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document.addEventListener('click', event => {
if (event.target.matches('.button-click')) {
aa('clickedObjectIDs', {
eventName: 'CLICK_HIT',
index: 'INDEX_NAME',
objectIDs: [event.target.getAttribute('data-object-id')]
});
}
});
Sending Conversion Events
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document.addEventListener('click', event => {
if (event.target.matches('.button-convert')) {
aa('convertedObjectIDs', {
eventName: 'CONVERT_HIT',
index: 'INDEX_NAME',
objectIDs: [event.target.getAttribute('data-object-id')]
});
}
});
Sending View Events
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document.addEventListener('click', event => {
if (event.target.matches('.button-view')) {
aa('viewedObjectIDs', {
eventName: 'VIEW_HIT',
index: 'INDEX_NAME',
objectIDs: [event.target.getAttribute('data-object-id')]
});
}
});
