caution

You are reading documentation for an outdated version. Here’s the latest one!

GA cookies tracking

If this plugin is used, the tracker will look for Google Analytics cookies (Universal Analytics and GA4, specifically the __utma, __utmb, __utmc, __utmv, __utmz, and _ga cookies) and combine their values into event context entities that get sent with every event.

GA cookies information is automatically tracked once configured.

Install plugin

JavaScript (tag)

Tracker Distribution	Included
sp.js	✅
sp.lite.js	❌

Download:

Download from GitHub Releases (Recommended)	Github Releases (plugins.umd.zip)
Available on jsDelivr	jsDelivr (latest)
Available on unpkg	unpkg (latest)

Note: The links to the CDNs above point to the current latest version. You should pin to a specific version when integrating this plugin on your website if you are using a third party CDN in production.

Browser (npm)

• npm install @snowplow/browser-plugin-ga-cookies@3
• yarn add @snowplow/browser-plugin-ga-cookies@3
• pnpm add @snowplow/browser-plugin-ga-cookies@3

Initialization

pre-v3.17.0

JavaScript (tag)

window.snowplow('addPlugin',
  "https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@snowplow/browser-plugin-ga-cookies@3/dist/index.umd.min.js",
  ["snowplowGaCookies", "GaCookiesPlugin"]
);

Browser (npm)

import { newTracker, trackPageView } from '@snowplow/browser-tracker';
import { GaCookiesPlugin } from '@snowplow/browser-plugin-ga-cookies';

newTracker('sp1', '{{collector_url}}', {
   appId: 'my-app-id',
   plugins: [ GaCookiesPlugin() ],
});

JavaScript (tag)

window.snowplow('addPlugin',
  "https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@snowplow/browser-plugin-ga-cookies@3/dist/index.umd.min.js",
  ["snowplowGaCookies", "GaCookiesPlugin"],
  [pluginOptions]
);

Browser (npm)

import { newTracker, trackPageView } from '@snowplow/browser-tracker';
import { GaCookiesPlugin } from '@snowplow/browser-plugin-ga-cookies';

newTracker('sp1', '{{collector_url}}', {
   appId: 'my-app-id',
   plugins: [ GaCookiesPlugin(pluginOptions) ],
});

The pluginOptions parameter allows to configure the plugin. Its type is:

interface GACookiesPluginOptions {
  ua?: boolean;
  ga4?: boolean;
  ga4MeasurementId?: string | string[];
  cookiePrefix?: string | string[];
}

Name	Default	Description
ua	true	Send Universal Analytics specific cookie values.
ga4	false	Send Google Analytics 4 specific cookie values.
ga4MeasurementId	""	Measurement id(s) to search the Google Analytics 4 session cookie. Can be a single measurement id as a string or an array of measurement id strings. The cookie has the form of <cookie_prefix>_ga_<container-id> where <container-id> is the data stream container id and <cookie_prefix> is the optional cookie_prefix option of the gtag.js tracker.
cookiePrefix	[]	Cookie prefix set on the Google Analytics 4 cookies using the cookie_prefix option of the gtag.js tracker.

Context entities

pre-v3.17.0

Adding this plugin will automatically capture the following context:

Context iglu:com.google.analytics/cookies/jsonschema/1-0-0

Example

{
  "_ga": "GA1.2.739498691.16151511088"
}

Adding this plugin will automatically capture the following contexts:

1. For Universal Analytics cookies: iglu:com.google.analytics/cookies/jsonschema/1-0-0, e.g.

   {
       "_ga": "GA1.2.3.4"
   }

2. For GA4 cookies: iglu:com.google.ga4/cookies/jsonschema/1-0-0

   {
       "_ga": "G-1234",
       "cookie_prefix": "prefix",
       "session_cookies": [
           {
               "measurement_id": "G-1234",
               "session_cookie": "567"
           }
       ]
   }