Record download stats for resources (extension)

[rgrp]

As a User (especially as a Package Owner/Maintainer?) I want to know how many times a resource has been downloaded (and when).

So let's record download stats (as in clicks on the link for a resource).

Implementation

• Use the existing support for this feature in google analytics or piwiki
• For google analytics see:
  • Integrate to record: ​http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55529
  • Accessing analytics data via API (for showing download counts): ​http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/gdata/gdataDeveloperGuide.html
• Limitations only record downloads by browsers with js turned on.
  • This is OK I think (in any case machine download via e.g. datapkg does not get downloaded)

Old Spec (do it in CKAN)

• Record info of form: resource id (or url?), timestamp
• Do this via javascript capturing of onclick event talking to an api
• API: /api/resource/{id}/download
  • POST to increment (how do we stop spamming -- could use a nonce setup with a random string set on each page load for the js)
  • GET to get data back { total: X, day_count: [ [yyyy-mm-dd, count], ... ] }

Questions

• Do we record ip addresses (to handle de-botting etc)?
• Do we count preview clicks as well?

[sebbacon]

Could consider using third-party analytics tracking here, which will also give referrer etc data for free?

Would probably be bes provided in the form of optional piwik or google analytics integration. Being able to say in the UI how many downloads there have been would need piwik.