What is Mixpanel (the service) ?¶ ↑

Mixpanel is a real-time analytics service that helps companies understand how users interact with web applications. mixpanel.com

What does this Gem?¶ ↑

• Track events with properties directly from your backend.

• Track events with properties through javascript using a rack middleware.

How to install?¶ ↑

gem install mixpanel

How to use it with a Rails application?¶ ↑

In your environment config file add this.

Rails::Initializer.run do |config|

  config.middleware.use "MixpanelMiddleware", "YOUR_MIXPANEL_API_TOKEN"

In your application_controller class add a method to instance mixpanel.

before_filer :initialize_mixpanel

def initialize_mixpanel
  @mixpanel = Mixpanel.new("YOUR_MIXPANEL_API_TOKEN", request.env)
end

Then in each request you want to track some event you can use:

To track events directly from your backend…

@mixpanel.track_event("Sign in", {:some => "property"})

To track events after response with javascript…

@mixpanel.append_event("Sign in", {:some => "property"})

Notes¶ ↑

It is strongly recommended to call Mixpanel#track_event using an async lib like delayed job or similar, otherwise you will delay your server responses with mixpanel responses.