Mixpanel SDKs: Ruby

The Mixpanel Ruby library is designed to be used for scripting, or in circumstances when a user isn't directly interacting with your application on the web or a mobile device.

The Full API Reference (opens in a new tab), Library Source Code (opens in a new tab), and an Example Script (opens in a new tab) is documented in our GitHub repo.

Getting Started

See our server quickstart for how to get started with the Ruby SDK.

EU Data Residency

Route data to Mixpanel's EU servers by using a custom consumer (opens in a new tab)

require 'mixpanel-ruby'
 
eu_consumer = Mixpanel::Consumer.new(
    'https://api-eu.mixpanel.com/track',
    'https://api-eu.mixpanel.com/engage',
    'https://api-eu.mixpanel.com/groups',
)
tracker = Mixpanel::Tracker.new(YOUR_PROJECT_TOKEN) do |type, message|
    eu_consumer.send!(type, message)
end

Storing User Profiles

In addition to events, you can send user profile updates to Mixpanel. Mixpanel can maintain a profile of each of your users, storing information you know about them. An update is a message that changes the properties of a user profile.

You can use profiles to explore and segment users by who they are, rather than what they did. You can also use profiles to send messages, such as emails, SMS, or push notifications.

Mixpanel determines default geolocation data ($city,$region, mp_country_code) using the IP address on the incoming request. As all server-side calls will likely originate from the same IP (that is, the IP of your server), this can have the unintended effect of setting the location of all of your users to the location of your data center. Read about best practices for geolocation with server-side implementations (opens in a new tab).

###Setting Profile Properties Instances of Mixpanel::Tracker (opens in a new tab) have a property called people that is an instance of Mixpanel::People (opens in a new tab). You can use people to send profile updates.

// create or update a profile with First Name, Last Name,
// E-Mail Address, Phone Number, and Favorite Color
// without updating geolocation data or $last_seen
tracker.people.set('12345', {
    '$first_name'       => 'John',
    '$last_name'        => 'Doe',
    '$email'            => 'john.doe@example.com',
    '$phone'            => '5555555555',
    'Favorite Color'    => 'red'
}, ip = 0, {'$ignore_time' => 'true'});

This call to Mixpanel::People#set (opens in a new tab) will change the value of properties on user 12345's profile. If there isn't a profile with distinct_id 12345 in Mixpanel already, a new profile will be created. If user 12345 already has has any of these properties set on their profile, the old values will be overwritten with the new ones.

Incrementing Numeric Properties

You can change the current value of numeric properties using people.increment (opens in a new tab). This is useful when you want to keep a running tally of things, such as games played, emails sent, or points earned.

tracker.people.increment('12345', {
   'Logins used' => 1,
   # use a negative number to subtract
   'Logins remaining' => -1,
})

Appending to List Properties

Use people.append (opens in a new tab) to add an item to an existing list-valued property. The values you send with the append will be added to the end of the list for each named property. If the property doesn't exist, it will be created with a one element list as its value.

tracker.people.append('12345', {
    'Favorite Fruits' => 'Apples'
})

Other Types of Profile Updates

There are a few other types of profile updates. They're exposed as members of Mixpanel::People (opens in a new tab).

Group Analytics

Mixpanel Group Analytics allows behavioral data analysis by selected groups, as opposed to individual users.

Grouping by identifiers other than the distinct_id allows analysis at a company or group level when using Mixpanel analytics. Read this article to learn more about Group Analytics.

A group is identified by the group_key and group_id.

• group_key is the property that connects event data for Group Analytics.
• group_id is the identifier for a specific group.

If the property “Company” is chosen for Group Analytics, “Company” is the group_key, and “Mixpanel”, “Company A”, and “13254” are all potential group_id values.

A user can belong to multiple groups. All updates to a group operate on the group_key and group_id.

Creating a Group Key

See the Implementation section in this article for instructions on how to create a group key in your Project Settings.

Sending Group Identifiers With Events

To send group identifiers with events, send the group_key as a property key and the group_id as the property value. The data type of the group_key property is a list, therefore you can add multiple values for a single user. It is also possible to pass only one value.

Tracker = Mixpanel::Tracker.new(YOUR_MIXPANEL_TOKEN)
tracker.track("user_id1", “App Open”, {
  ‘GROUP KEY’ => 1234,
})
 
## event will be attributed to multiple groups with IDs 1000, 1234
tracker.track(“user_id1”, “App Open”, {
  ‘GROUP KEY’ => [1000, 1234],
})

Mixpanel can group events by the group_id, similar to how events are grouped with the distinct_id. A group_id, however, is a group level identifier and not a user level identifier like the distinct_id.

Note that sending in a group_key and group_id as event properties does not add users to the group profile or assign group membership to the user's profile. Only events with your chosen group_key property set will be available for behavioral analysis at the group level. See the sections following the code example to learn how to add users to a group profile or add a group to the user's profile.

Adding Group Identifiers to Individual Users

To connect group information to a user profile, include the group_key and group_id by sending the property as part of the people_set call.

## Create or update a user profile with distinct_id "user_id1", a $name property,
## and group_key = 'Company', group_id = 'Mixpanel'
tracker = Mixpanel::Tracker.new(YOUR_MIXPANEL_TOKEN)
tracker.people.set("user_id1", {
  '$name' => 'Steph Curry',
  ‘Company’ => 'Mixpanel',
})

Creating Group Profiles

It is possible to create a Group profile that is similar to a user profile. You must call a property-setting method like Mixpanel::Groups#set (described below) to create a group profile. It is important to include the group_key, group_id, and at least one property so that the profile is not empty.

Setting Group Properties

You can add details to Group Profiles by adding properties to them.

You can set the property $name to populate the name field at the top of the group profile.

These operations are similar to the corresponding operations for user profile property updates.

set

Mixpanel::Groups#set updates or adds properties to a group profile. The profile is created if it does not exist.

## Sets properties on a group profile. Takes a Hash with string
## keys, and values that are strings, numbers, booleans, or DateTimes
tracker = Mixpanel::Tracker.new(YOUR_MIXPANEL_TOKEN)
## Sets properties on group profile with group_key "Company", group_id "Acme"
tracker.groups.set('Company', 'Acme', {
  '$name' => 'Acme, Inc.',
  'plan' => 'Premium',
  'Sign-Up Date' => DateTime.now
})

For all Group methods, see our reference (opens in a new tab).

Tracking Revenue

Mixpanel makes it easy to analyze the revenue you make from individual customers. By associating charges with user profiles, you can compare revenue across different customer segments and calculate things like lifetime value.

You can track a single transaction with the track_charge method of Mixpanel::Tracker#people (opens in a new tab). Sending a message created with track_charge will add transactions to the individual user profile, which will also be reflected in the Mixpanel Revenue report.

## Records a charge of $9.99 from user '12345'
tracker.people.track_charge('12345', 9.99)
 
## records a charge of $30.50 on the 2nd of January
mixpanel.people.track_charge("12345", 30.50, {
    '$time' => DateTime.parse("Jan 2 2013"),
})