send a pageview event via Measurement Protocol to a GA4 property

Question

How can I send a pageview event via Measurement Protocol to a GA4 property with PHP?

This is how I'm doing, but inside my Google Analytics 4 property I can't see any traffic.

$data = array(
    'api_secret' => 'XXXX-YYYYY',
    'measurement_id' => 'G-12345678',
    'client_id' => gen_uuid(), // generates a random id
    'events' => array(
      'name' => 'page_view',
      'params' => array(),
    )
);

$url = 'https://www.google-analytics.com/mp/collect';
$content = http_build_query($data);
$content = utf8_encode($content);

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER,array('Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded'));
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION,CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POST, TRUE);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $content);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

Try setting your content type to Content-Type: application/json as per spec https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/ga4/reference?client_type=gtag#transport — XTOTHEL, Mar 21 '22 at 16:46

Alex McGlothlin · Answer 1 · 2022-05-24T21:51:57.713

I'm working on registering pageviews to track API usage right now, here's what I've found:

XTOTHEL is right about setting the content type to content/json above. In addition to specifying the content type you also have to send JSON data as the CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS data.

Also per their specification the api_secret and measurement_id need to be part of the URI: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/ga4/sending-events?client_type=gtag#required_parameters

Lastly, you can use debug mode to validate your responses and figure out what's going on now by simply changing the URL to google-analytics.com/debug/mp/collect

Here's the code I'm working with right now:

//retrieve or generate GA tracking id
            if (empty($_COOKIE['_cid'])) {
                setcookie('_cid', vsprintf('%s%s-%s-%s-%s-%s%s%s', str_split(bin2hex(random_bytes(16)), 4)));
            }
            $data = '{"client_id":"'.$_COOKIE['_cid'].'","events":[{"name":"load_endpoint","params":{"page_location":"'.$request->fullUrl().'"}}]}';
            echo '<pre>';
            print_r($data);

            $measurement_id = 'G-xxxxx';
            $api_secret = 'xxxx';
            $url = 'https://www.google-analytics.com/debug/mp/collect?api_secret='.$api_secret.'&measurement_id='.$measurement_id;
            $ch = curl_init();
            curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']);
            curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
            curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, ['Content-Type: application/json']);
            curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
            curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);
            curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
            $response = curl_exec($ch);
            curl_close($ch);
            echo $response;

This works to a certain extent. Currently it's registering the page view as a custom event instead of an actual pageview though. I'm still trying to figure out how to get them to come through as page views.

Follow up After a little more debugging I figured out page views are actually working, they just weren't showing up in some of the views. The fix for that was to add page_title into the params:

$data = '
{
  "client_id": "'.$_COOKIE['_cid'].'",
  "events": [
    {
      "name": "page_view",
      "params": {
        "page_location": "'.$request->fullUrl().'",
        "page_title": "'.$request->path().'"
      }
    }
  ]
}
';

A few extra notes for whoever comes next:

Debug mode did return some useful validation errors for invalid top-level parameters (client_id, events) - but it didn't return errors for anything inside of the "params" for events. IE - i put "page_asdtitle" instead of "page_title" and it accepted it just fine.
None of the tests I sent through actually showed up in the debug panel while using debug mode. I suspect this is because of the data propagation delay, it's probably not loading realtime data.
Using a JSON validator can help. Make sure you use objects and arrays where GA tells you to.
If you get stuck figuring out why your PHP code doesn't work, write the code as a browser event in JavaScript and run it in your browser. There's tons of examples on how to do that. From there, you can use Dev Tools -> Network to inspect the request. If you right click on the google analytics request to the 'collect' endpoint you'll see an option to Copy Request as CURL. Put that into a text editor and compare it to what your PHP code is sending.
To ACTUALLY test this without the massive propagation delay you can login to Google Analytics, go to Reports -> Realtime, and you should see your data show up within 30-60 seconds if it's working. Realtime data will NOT show up if you're using the /debug/ endpoint though.

send a pageview event via Measurement Protocol to a GA4 property

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