Track file downloads

My initial thoughts would be to add a script to the pages which would recurse through the DOM and add an onclick event to all urls.

My JavaScript skills suck, so I'd prefer somebody else to do this and contribute it as a patch.

Alternatives, get the upload.module to pass in the onclick as an $attributes parameter to the l() function? (probably not going to happen!)

all urls might be a bit extreme but yes, i think the DOM solution is best. should be easy in 5.0 with jquery ... also note that drupal_add_js() changed significantly and this module will want to take advantage. see http://drupal.org/node/64279

The DOM is the DOcument Object Model which describes your HTML page in the browser. JavaScript can manipulate this.

Having to put the Urchin tracker include at the top of the page then causes the potential problem of making sites slow to load, as the web browser waits for Google to server the script file.

I guess it could have some logic to say when people want to track download links it inserts the tracker code in the html header. It's possible.

I wonder if it would still work okay if the onclick events are attached to the download anchors upon page load, which is after the urchin script is loaded in the footer of the page?

the position of the script doesn't matter. all the right bits will likely be in place before the user clicks a link. or maybe i am missing something.

in 5.0 links have unique identifiers which is really helpful for this.

Just adding a +1 for tracking file downloads.

There is a simple solution to this, something that worked for me.
I needed to display file attachments in a custom way, I used this snippet here http://drupal.org/node/86413, and within the function phptemplate_upload_attachments() I added the urchin code. The full code is here:

function phptemplate_upload_attachments($files) {
  $header = array(t('Type'),t('Attachment'), t('Size'));
  //edited
  $header = array();
  
  $rows = array();
  foreach ($files as $file) {
    if ($file->list) {
      $href = check_url(($file->fid ? file_create_url($file->filepath) : url(file_create_filename($file->filename, file_create_path()))));
	  //added for GA code
	  $attrs["onClick"] = "javascript:urchinTracker ("/downloads/$file->filename"); ";
      $text = check_plain($file->description ? $file->description : $file->filename);
      $rows[] = array(theme('file_icon', $file) ,l($text, $href,$attrs), '('.format_size($file->filesize).')');
    }
  }
  if (count($rows)) {
    return theme('table', $header, $rows, array('id' => 'attachments'));
  }
}

You'll need to see the reference link above for the phptemplate_file_icon function.
If you don't need to use file icons for attachments, you should be able to replace $rows[] with the following:
$rows[] = array(l($text, $href, $attrs), format_size($file->filesize));

To explain this a bit more, we need to add the link attributes, we add onClick to record the mouse click action; the operative lines are
$attrs["onClick"] = "javascript:urchinTracker ("/downloads/$file->filename"); ";

and the line where the link to the download is created, we add the link attributes array $attrs
l($text, $href,$attrs)

Guys,

a created a javascript that does this and track outgoing links. its required jquery, so its only useful for drupal 5.
see http://drupal.org/node/101509

regards,

massa

Since no patch exists in this issue to be reviewed, this should be marked as a duplicate of http://drupal.org/node/101509 , since that is where the actual patch exists.