GA session metrics equivalent in Piwik

[ArkeologeN]

We recently moved from GA to Piwik. Our existing application & entire model is based upon the same phenomenon and principles that works over Google Analytics.

We have a call in Google Analytics to grab information about sessions based upon dimensions. It looks likes this:

.analytics.data.ga.get({
        'ids'        : CONFIG.google.analytics.profileId,
        'start-date' : moment(flipbook.created).format(ISODateFormat),
        'end-date'   : moment(new Date()).format(ISODateFormat),
        'metrics'    : 'ga:sessions',
        'dimensions' : 'ga:date,ga:deviceCategory,ga:source,ga:socialNetwork,ga:country',
        'filters'    : 'ga:pagePath=~^/flipbook/' + flipbook.id
      })

which returns arrays of row which includes date, device, social network, country & views. However, when it comes to Piwik, we need to deal with APIs as follow:

• UserSettings.getBrowser
• UserCountry.getCountry
• VisitsSummary.getVisits
• DevicesDetection.getType

Even more, it doesn't make date as a base column of the data set. The sample data returned by Google Analytics looks like this:

[
       { date: '2014-01-10', device: 'desktop', source: '(direct)', location: 'United Kingdom', views: 5},
       { date: '2014-01-10', device: 'tablet', source: 'website.com', location: 'Norway', views: 7},
       { date: '2014-01-11', device: 'mobile', source: 'Twitter', location: 'Norway', views: 10}
    ]

How can we achieve the same output in Piwik using a single call or atleast achieve it?

[mattab]

Hi @ArkeologeN this is a good question. Unfortunately Piwik is still lacking a proper Custom Reports feature that would let you generate reports with any number of custom dimensions. we recently added Pivot table see in the API ref doc the parameters pivotBy and pivotByColumn but they're pretty slow. see also #6227 and #4776

Please feel free to create another issue to request this particular feature of getting a grouping over a custom set of columns.