(Cross-posted from Google Analytics Blog)
On the Google Analytics API Team, we’re fascinated with what people create using the Data Export API. You guys come up with some really amazing stuff! Lately, we’ve also been paying a lot of attention to how people use it. We looked at whether the API has stumbling points (and where they are), what common features every developer wants in their GA applications, and what tricky areas need deeper explanations than we can give by replying to posts in our discussion group.
As a result of identifying these areas, we’ve written a few in-depth articles. Each article is meant as a “Deep Dive” into a specific topic, and is paired with open-source, sample reference code.
In no particular order, the articles are as follows:
Visualizing
Google Analytics Data with Google Chart Tools
This article describes how
you can use JavaScript to pull data from the Export API to dynamically create and embed chart
images in a web page. To do this, it shows you how to use the Data Export API and Google Chart
Tools to create visualizations of your Google Analytics Data.
Outputting
Data from the Data Export API to CSV Format
If you use Google Analytics,
chances are that your data eventually makes its way into a spreadsheet. This article shows you
how to automate all the manual work by printing data from the Data Export API in CSV, the most
ubiquitous file format for table data.
Filling
in Missing Values In Date Requests
If you want to request data displayed
over a time series, you will find that there might be missing dates in your series requests.
When requesting multiple dimensions, the Data Export API only returns entries for dates that
have collected data. This can lead to missing dates in a time series, but this article
describes how to fill in these missing dates.
We think this article format makes for a perfect jumping off point. Download the code, follow along in the article, and when you’re done absorbing the material, treat the code as a starting point and hack away to see what you can come up with!
And if you’ve got some more ideas for areas you’d like us to expound upon, let us know!