{"id":3553,"date":"2018-06-03T11:48:44","date_gmt":"2018-06-03T11:48:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.botreetechnologies.com\/blog\/?p=3553"},"modified":"2026-03-27T17:07:45","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T11:37:45","slug":"ahoy-an-analytics-for-rails-track-events-and-visits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.botreetechnologies.com\/blog\/ahoy-an-analytics-for-rails-track-events-and-visits\/","title":{"rendered":"Track User Events and Visits in Rails using Ahoy GEM!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ahoy GEM Introduction<\/h2>\n

If you are wondering how to use Ahoy gem in Ruby on Rails, then we have got you covered. It is useful in Rails to track user activity for different products. Rails Ahoy gem provides various aspects to track visits and events in Ruby. How is it used with Google Analytics? We will look at that in detail. <\/span><\/p>\n

Google analytics provides very good options for tracking usage data – visits, views, clicks and much more. In one of the e-commerce projects we are working on, the client wanted to track products which user has liked\/disliked the most and the highest number of products visited by the vendors.<\/p>\n

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There could be other such use-cases where <\/span><\/i>Ruby on Rails developers <\/span>need to use the data available from such third-party services and acquire some new parameters. <\/span><\/i>So, how can they do that?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There is no point reinventing the wheel, writing a whole new business-logic component without looking at the available gems from the vast ruby community. And we found ‘Ahoy Gem’!<\/p>\n

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Checkout 10 best Ruby on Rails Gems for Web Development<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Presenting Ahoy Gem<\/b><\/h3>\n

Ahoy is a word for greetings. But in the realm of Rails Ahoy<\/a> is a gem which we can use for tracking various events and visits as we want. It has saved a lot of time and effort for us!<\/p>\n

Here is the short description from gem documentation:<\/p>\n

Track visits and events in Ruby, JavaScript, and native apps. Data is stored in your database by default so you can easily combine it with other data.<\/i><\/p>\n

Now, lets jump straight into the installation and coding part. Installation is as simple as adding line to gemfile and running some generators.<\/p>\n

Add this line to gemfile<\/i> and hit bundle command as below:<\/p>\n

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gem 'ahoy_matey'
\nbundle install<\/code><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This will install various gems which will help to track user actions. Some of them are as below:<\/p>\n

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browser, device_detector, geocoder<\/code><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

After bundle, run below generator:<\/p>\n

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rails generate ahoy:install<\/code><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This will generate ahoy.rb<\/code><\/i> file in initializers directory, two model files visit.rb<\/code><\/i> and event.rb<\/code><\/i> in app\/models\/ahoy<\/code><\/i> directory and one migration which will add two tables named as ahoy_events<\/code><\/i> and ahoy_visits<\/code><\/i>.<\/p>\n

Run rails:db:migrate<\/code><\/i> to create tables.<\/p>\n

Now, installation is done and let’s see it in action. Restart your web server, open a page in your browser, and a visit will be created.<\/p>\n

Fire up rails c<\/code><\/i> and check Ahoy::Visit.first<\/code><\/i> and you can see new event.<\/p>\n