Calling GA Measurement Protocol API from Apex

Question

I am making a call to Google Analytics from salesforce. I am getting an error stating that the parameter 'v' is not being sent. This is included in the json body.

If I use a third party script like python to send the same parameters via an HTTP Post request, I am able to send them over. Yet, sending these parameters via Salesforce Apex is causing this error. Here is my python code that works.

import requests
from collections import OrderedDict
geoids='1000041'
referral='http://www.bing.com'
uid='GOOGLEUACODE'
payload = {"tid" : uid,   "v" : "1",   "cid" : "client_1",   "t" : "event",   "dp" : "www.bing.com",   "ds" : "web",   "dr" : "referral",   "geoid" : "1000041",   "ec" : "web",   "ea" : "web",   "el" : "web",   "ev" : "0"}
urls='https://www.google-analytics.com/debug/collect'
resp = requests.post(url=urls,params=payload,headers=user_agent)
print resp
print resp.url
print resp.status_code

If I attempt this exact same call in Apex, it fails with an error saying the paramter "v" has not been supplied. The exact error message is

 "description": "A value is required for parameter 'v'. Please see http://goo.gl/a8d4RP#v for details.",

Here is the Apex code for this.

string url= 'https://www.google-analytics.com/debug/collect';
string payload = '{"tid" : "GOOGLEUACODE",   "v" : "1",   "cid" : "client_1",   "t" : "event",   "dp" : "www.bing.com",   "ds" : "web",   "dr" : "referral",   "geoid" : "1000041",   "ec" : "web",   "ea" : "web",   "el" : "web",   "ev" : "0"}';
Http h = new Http();
HttpRequest req = new HttpRequest();
HttpResponse res = new HttpResponse();
req.setEndpoint(url);
req.setMethod('POST');
req.setBody(payload);
res = h.send(req);
System.Debug('response body '+res.getBody());

It looks like I am unable to send the body in the POST method. I have tried a few things like setting the Content-Type in the HTTP Request, but those have not worked.

What has worked is changing the method to a GET and converting the payload string into a different format like tid=GOOGLECODE&v=1&event=dp

So how can I preserve the format of the payload string in the original python code and do this?

If you want to try this code, you can use this UA-ID created by me for this purpose: uid='UA-78999084-1'

Edited: I am not trying to make an actual call in the code. The validation succeeds in the python code but not in the Apex code.

Answer 1

it is different approach between Python "requests.post" and Salesforce "http.send"

python params

Python parameter that you are using, "params=payload" adds all the parameters to the URL request, so the output is:

https://www.google-analytics.com/debug/collect?tid=GOOGLEUACODE&v=1& ...

there is no native way to do so in Salesforce. You can write your own method that will take {"parameter":"value","parameter":"value"} string as input and write corresponding "parameter=value&parameter=value" output.

I managed to make POST also work, so it is not necessary to change method to GET.

string url= 'https://www.google-analytics.com/debug/collect'; 
string payload = 'v=1&cid=client_1&tid=UA-78999084-1&dp=www.bing.com&t=event&ds=web&dr=referral&geoid=1000041&ev=0';
Http h = new Http();
HttpRequest req = new HttpRequest();
HttpResponse res = new HttpResponse();
req.setEndpoint(url);
req.setMethod('POST');
req.setBody(payload);
res = h.send(req);

System.Debug('response body '+res.getBody());

Answer 2

I am not sure if this is a correct answer. I guess the endpoint https://www.google-analytics.com/debug/collect is just to check or validate if its beeing hit. If you use https://www.google-analytics.com/collect instead, it should work