user session log module/plugin for GWT

[Cyryl Kwaśniewski]

Hello, 

I'm looking for a tool that would allow me to log user sessions with exact interactions and activity flows (or something that would allow my to conclude) in large GWT application. The problem is that it was written in such a way that there's only a single URL invoked once after logging in.

Do any modules/plugin for GWT exist that would output the user interaction to some kind of a log?

Kind regards,

Cyryl

[Joseph Lust]

I recommend Google Analytics. Just wireup to their events logging tool. There are other solutions out there like Tea Leaf and WebTrekk, but many such solutions don't like dynamic client side generated pages like GWT.

For a working example see  http://code.google.com/p/gwt-examples/ and Google Analytics Integrated Application.

Since our company can't use GA, our team is just writing out own handler since we just want to collect discrete events like clicks and opening of certain sub-apps. The gist is to have a client side buffer collecting events and then relaying them back to the server at some interval (i.e. every 5s). You can see this in the GA tool, click the link 6 times fast and you'll only see one server post. Also note that rather than having the receiving the data via a servlet and storing it in the db, it is often better and faster to just point to a static empty file (i.e. empty.htm) and just add your data as GET params (i.e. empty.htm?evt=click&x=344&y=45). Then sum that information from the Apache with a cron task.

Sincerely,

Joseph