$(Brad Oyler).TryToBuild(stuff)

I’ve used a few services in the past to do site “event tracking” (ie Google Analytics)  but most didn’t give me all the data and control I need to easily track what was needed… (mostly user identity stuff). Another big difference is that this is all done server-side, which has it’s pros\cons as well. 

Anyway, here’s how I did it using CloudMine’s backend service in ~20 lines of code.

Step1. Add this Action Filter to your MVC application (ie Global.asax.cs)

[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Class | AttributeTargets.Method, Inherited = true, AllowMultiple = true)]
    public class UserTrackingAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute
    {
        public static readonly string appId = "your CloudMine app Id";
        public static readonly string appSecret = "your CloudMine app Secret";

        class PageRequest
        {
            public int PageId { get; set; }
            public Double Created { get; set; }
            public string Url { get; set; }
            public string UserName { get; set; }
            public string UserIP { get; set; }
            public string Controller { get; set; }
            public string Action { get; set; }
        }

        public override void OnResultExecuting(ResultExecutingContext context)
        {
            PageRequest preq = new PageRequest
            {
              Url = request.RawUrl, 
              UserIP = request.UserHostAddress, 
              UserName = context.HttpContext.User.Identity.Name, 
              Created = ExtensionMethods.JsonDate(DateTime.Now),
              Action = (string)context.RequestContext.RouteData.Values["action"], 
              Controller = (string)context.RouteData.Values["controller"],
              PageId = Convert.ToInt32(context.RouteData.Values["Id"]),
            };
          
          using (var client = new WebClient())
          {
           client.Headers.Add("X-CloudMine-ApiKey", appSecret);
           client.Headers.Add("Content-Type", "application/json");
           var serializer = new JavaScriptSerializer();
           var data = serializer.Serialize(preq);
           var payload = "{\"PV_" + DateTime.Now.Ticks + "\":" + data + "}";
           var bytes = Encoding.Default.GetBytes(payload);
           client.UploadDataAsync(new Uri("https://api.cloudmine.me/v1/app/" + appId + "/text"), "PUT", bytes);
          }
        }
         

Then… just add the filter attribute [UserTracking] to any controller action and you’re ready to start logging…in real-time. 

The full example project is on my GitHub…so go fork it.