Create a React app with Google Analytics

About this guide

This development guide walks you through everything you need to do to build a high-quality React app integrated with Google Analytics. Check out the tasks below to get started. To save time, you can also use our boilerplate, which gives you a complete React codebase with all of these tasks done for you. Okay, let's dive in!

Tasks

• Setup your React appGet the code

  Setup a React app using npx create-react-app and routing using React Router. There are many ways you can structure your app, but a common setup is to have an App component that defines top-level routes, with each route component imported from the /pages directory. The rest of your components should be located in your /components directory. You can then run your app locally with the npm run start command.

• Integrate Google Analytics and automatically track pageviewsGet the code

  The easiest way to add Google Analytics to your app is with the analytics library. Create a new file called analytics.js where you instantiate the analytics library and the @analytics/google-analytics plugin. To automatically track every page view in Google Analytics you'll want to import browserHistory from react-router, use thebrowserHistory.listen(callback) function, and fire off analytics.page() within the callback. Finally, import your custom analytics.js file in you App component so that it's included on all pages.

• Track events in Google AnalyticsGet the code

  To track events in your app you just need to export the analytics object from the custom analytics.js file you previously setup, import it wherever needed, and then call analytics.track('eventName', data).

Get the code

You can get the code for this guide with our React and Google Analytics Boilerplate. You'll get a complete React codebase with Google Analytics integration, all the tasks listed above done for you, and a responsive multi-page template. It should save you about two weeks of development time.

Get the boilerplate