Send Information About Clicked Link To The Server Before Redirect

We're creating a click tracking app, that builds heatmaps. I'm writing a script which users are suppose to insert into their pages for tracking to work. It works fine on elements,

Solution 1:

var globalStopper = true;

$(document).on('click', function (e) {
    if (globalStopper === false)
        return true; //proceed with click if stopper is NOT set
    else {
        globalStopper = false; //release the breaks

        $.ajax({
            //blahblah
            complete: function (xhr, status,) {
                $(elem).click(); //when ajax request done - "rerun" the click
            }
        });
        return false; //DO NOT let browser process the click
    }
});

Also, instead of adding image, try adding script. And then add the script to the HEAD section. This way the browser will "wait" until it's loaded.

 $(document).on('click', function (e) {
     var scriptTag = document.createElement("script");
     scriptTag.setAttribute("type", "text/javascript");
     scriptTag.setAttribute("src", url);
     document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(scriptTag);
     return true;
 }

Solution 2:

I would take a look at the navigator sendBeacon API mentioned in this stack overflow answer or directly linked to here.

From the description on the site

navigator.sendBeacon(url, data) - This method addresses the needs of analytics and diagnostics code that typically attempts to send data to a web server prior to the unloading of the document.

Solution 3:

You can save information to ajax request in cookies or localStorage and make any worker that will send information. Saving to cookies or localStorage is faster then ajax-request. You can do next:

$(document).click(function (e) {
    var queue = localStorage.getItem('requestQueue');
    queue.push(data);
    localStorage.setItem('requestQueue',queue);
});

$(function(){
  setInterval(function(){
    var queue = localStorage.getItem('requestQueue');
    while (queue.length > 0) {
      var data = queue.pop();
      $.ajax({
        ...
        success: function(){
          localStorage.setItem('requestQueue', queue);
        }
      });
    }
  },intervalToSendData);
});

So, when user click on link or send a form, data will be saved to storage and after user go to next page, this worker starts and send data to your server.

Solution 4:

The JavaScript is basically executed in single thread. It is not possible to have your callback function executed and at the same time have an infinite loop waiting for a flag variable from it. The infinite loop will occupy the single execution thread and the callback will never be called.

Best approach is to cancel the default handler of your event and bubbling for it (basically return false if you are really building your tracking code with jQuery), and do the necessary actions (redirect page to the necessary address if a link was clicked or trigger other default actions), but this would take a lot of careful work to recreate all the possible combinations of actiona and callbacks.

Another approach is to: 1) Look for something specific to your code in the event data 2) If it is not present - make an AJAX call and in its callback re-trigger the same even on the same element, but this time with your specific bit added to the even data; after the AJAX call return false 3) If your specific bits are present in the data - simply do nothing, allowing the default event processing to take place.

The either approach may bite, however.

Solution 5:

So if I understand right, you want your ajax logs completed before the page unloads and follows a link href. This sounds like a perfect case where you could consider using Deferreds in jQuery.

When your user clicks on anything that's supposed to take him away from the page, just check your promise status. If it's not resolved, you could throw a modal window over the page, and ask the user to wait til the progress is complete. Then, add a new pipe to your deferred, telling it to change the location href once everything is complete.

Let me know if this is the scenario. If it is, I'll explain in more detail. No use continuing if I didn't understand your requirement properly