ping

Your very own Google Analytics replacement, without all of the Google. Simple as pie.

Motivation

Google Analytics is creepy. It knows where you are, what computer you're using, what browser you're using, what page you visited, and so on. It has horizontal data for IP addresses, so Google knows what sites you've visited across the Internet, for how long, and what your path was. I'm uncomfortable giving Google all this data. In fact, I even wrote a blog post about how to block the various tracking services.

But, I wanted to know what my "greatest" hits are. I wanted to see what people liked and didn't like. Using Google Anayltics isn't an option, but what about using something much simpler? Enter: ping.

Ping: What It Is

Ping is a tiny little server that logs three things:

• IP address of visitor
• URL they visited
• When the visit happened

A single tiny JavaScript file that the user requests sends down these three things and that's all there is to it. As unintrusive as possible, while still providing insight into the site's strenghts.

It also respects the Do Not Track header, which many browsers now allow users to set for all requests. Complying with this header is not mandatory, but aligns nicely with our motivation for respecting users' privacy when they ask for it.

Installation

Want to run ping? No problem.

$ go get github.com/parkr/ping
$ PING_DB=./ping_production.sqlite3 ping -http=:8972

Specify a port (defaults to 8000) and a database URL and you're off to the races. Enjoy!

Running behind a proxy? No problem. Specify PING_PROXIED=true when invoking ping and you're good to go.

Prefer Docker? We got that too!

$ mkdir data
$ docker run --rm \
  -e PING_DB=/srv/data/ping_production.sqlite3 \
  -v $(pwd)/data:/srv/data:rw \
  parkr/ping \
  ping -http=:8972

This will save all data to the specified sqlite3 database, mounted to the container and written back to the host.

On NixOS, three copy-pasteable steps. Add the flake (the follows line keeps you to one nixpkgs):

# flake.nix
inputs.ping = {
  url = "github:parkr/ping";
  inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
};
# ...and in your nixosSystem:
modules = [ inputs.ping.nixosModules.default ./configuration.nix ];

Enable it:

# configuration.nix
services.ping = {
  enable = true;
  hosts = [ "example.com" ];            # sites allowed to report; add :port if not 80/443
  baseUrl = "https://ping.example.com"; # where /ping.js calls back to
};

Put TLS in front (ping listens on 127.0.0.1:8000):

security.acme = { acceptTerms = true; defaults.email = "[email protected]"; };
services.nginx = {
  enable = true;
  recommendedProxySettings = true; # passes the visitor's IP in X-Forwarded-For
  virtualHosts."ping.example.com" = {
    enableACME = true;
    forceSSL = true;
    locations."/".proxyPass = "http://127.0.0.1:${toString config.services.ping.port}";
  };
};

Upgrade with nix flake update ping. The database is /var/lib/ping/ping_production.sqlite3. Other options (port, listenAddress, openFirewall, user, group, stateDirectoryMode, package) are documented in nix/module.nix.

Then, load the script on your pages in the HTML:

<script src="https://domain.for.ping.server/ping.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Every page will load this /ping.js path from the ping server and will log the result to your sqlite3 database in the visits table.

If you set the -hosts flag for the ping executable, you can limit which hostnames will be logged. This is a security feature to ensure your sqlite3 database doesn't bloat with unwanted data from sites you don't want to track. For example, adding the flag -hosts=example.com,my-site.com,mysite.rocks will only log visits to your database for visits to example.com, my-site.com, and mysite.rocks. Of course, these sites have to load the javascript path as specified above, so this will only work for sites you control.