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Templatizing Google Analytics MEASUREMENT ID in Jekyll Github Pages

I have developed a system using Jekyll and Liquid template language to templatize the Google Analytics MEASUREMENT ID for my websites. To keep track of them, I wrote Python scripts to parse through the lines in sites.txt and create a `_config.yml` file for each website. With this system, I have a master list of my sites and a quick way to update the information.

Creating a Templatized System for Google Analytics MEASUREMENT ID in Jekyll Github Pages

By Michael Levin

Monday, May 2, 2022

Okay, wow. To say that I’m profoundly happy with my new blogging and release system would be an understatement. Over the past week everything from slicing and dicing the single-long-journal text-files that I keep, to stylizing them into HTML with the Jekyll template system, to the arrows that let you navigate between posts, to the release system and how it integrates into vim.

It’s all just so sweet. In tribute to Alan Rickman:

Now I have a machine gun… Ho, Ho, Ho.

Yep, this stuff certainly belongs on MikeLevinSEO.com. I don’t know how I ever started out with WhatsaMetaFor.io and PythonicAlly.com. Those sites are for such different things. This is where I talk Jekyll, blogging software and stuff. Okay, next steps? The one common component across sites that I still have in-place on a per-site basis that should be templatized is default.html.

The default.html is very special in the Jekyll blogging system. It is where most of the customization action occurs. It’s humorous to me that the template system for Jekyll is called Liquid and its logo is just like the vial the Dr. Jekyll drinks to become Mr. Hyde. I wonder how many people get the reference. I really have to read that book. Anyhoo…

The thing I had better read first is the Liquid Documentation. Interesting! It’s a Shopify technology. https://shopify.github.io/liquid/basics/introduction/

There’s Objects and Tags. Strange terminology “Tags” for something that contains conditional logic that’s used for blogging systems that has an entirely other meaning for tags. Colliding namespaces. Whatever. Ugh, another weird terminology is “Filters” which use the pipe-symbol (|) to pipe together bits of logic. Okay, I get it. A pipe is a filter. Ugh, system-inventors and their convoluted bucking of the Unix terminology they’re stealing from. Okay.

What I really need to do now is to use the exact same default.html across all sites. I need to make sure that the Liquid curly-percent-braces notation, what they call Tags, can be used at this phase of templating. I see that I have SEO tags in there which is doing exactly this. It’s also what I’m using for my youtubePlayer.html tag. That gives me the way, for sure. But I turn it upside down.

Take one of the default.html’s which has a particular site’s Google Analytics code on it and put it into my helper/template folder… okay, done. Now load that into vim and replace occurrences of the MEASUREMENT ID with an include command just like is used for the YouTube embed:

{% include youtubePlayer.html id=foo %}

Normally, the variable bit would be where foo appears. However it seems perfectly reasonable to use a tag like this in default.html the same way the SEO tag is used, but like this:

{% include gaid.txt %}

Oops, that’s a good idea, but an even better idea is to see what can be done with the _config.yml file. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12062766/jekyll-use-config-yml-values-in-the-html

It appears that every template has a site variable that contains things from the config file and you can arbitrarily set stuff in there like my_setting: “string”. So first I want to test it on a single site instance. Then I want to incorporate it into that make_helpers.py file I just made today at the beginning of the release process.

Okay, and it worked like a charm! I wish it was easier to paste Jekyll templates in here. The Liquid template language would all have to be escaped and neutralized, which I can see from the couple of places I did it above is a pain. I could probably write a Python function to do it during the slice & dice procedure, but I still like to publish long-page versions and it feels like a deep rabbit hole. Back out! 80/20-friggin’ rule.

Okay, now that default.html is copied into my common helpers/templates folder, I can start thinking about spinning out a custom _config.yml for each site.

I would love to use my sites.txt file and keep only one master list of the sites in the release system, but I don’t feel like parsing lines in the bash script. Doing it in Python’s a breeze. Okay, done.

I had to make another file with more detail than sites.txt. I call it gaids.txt:

G-RX2D1N1P2Y MikeLev.in             Mike Levin
G-RNSSPXFB53 MikeLevinSEO.com       Mike Levin SEO
G-K5EQ2QQG5D PythonicAlly.com       Pythonically
G-ZNMVJFLRD2 LinuxPythonvimgit.com  Linux, Python, vim & git
G-L7L2XR3J2G MikeAtEleven.com       Mike At Eleven
G-9YEC9X0GDW TardigradeCircus.com   Tardigrade Circus
G-L3QGENNVJ3 RemovableFinger.com    Removable Finger
G-K86B8JW5Q5 Mike-Levin.com         Mike Levin Dot Com
G-TJRX2PSWKT LunderVand.com         LunderVand
G-HL9DEK1TSG WhatsaMetaFor.io       What's A Meta For
G-N4RYB5DCV4 GuerillaTech.com       Guerilla Tech
G-YXNMZY6Z6F TicTacUFOSightings.com Tic Tac UFO Sightings
G-1JFHT28DRL PythonicAlly.org       Your Pythonic Ally
G-45KYH6XTTX Pipulate.com           Pipulate
G-0H19QDRNTL Levinux.com            Levinux

And this file works against that:

with open('gaids.txt') as fh:
    for line in fh:
        if line:
            gaids = line.rstrip().split()
            code = gaids[0]
            apex = gaids[1]
            title = ' '.join(gaids[2:])
            title = f'{title} | {gaids[1]}'
            aconfig = f'''theme: jekyll-theme-hacker
author: Mike Levin
permalink: /:slug/
gaid: {code}
title: {title}'''
            print(aconfig)
            print()
            with open(f'../{apex}/_config.yml', 'w') as fw:
                fw.write(aconfig)

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