As a data analyst, I want to be able to easily distinguish HoverCards hovers as preview classified requests in Hive, so that I can ascertain their impact on user interaction with the site.
HoverCards to stable desktop web is tentatively slated for Q4 FY 2015-2016 (April-June, 2016), and this is a hard requirement of that work.
| Project | Branch | Lines +/- | Subject | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| mediawiki/extensions/Popups | master | +8 -0 | Add X-Analytics request header when fetching popup data |
| Status | Subtype | Assigned | Task | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Resolved | Dereckson | T68374 Enable Hovercards on se.wikimedia.org (Swedish chapter wiki) | |||
| Resolved | Jdlrobson | T70860 [GOAL] Graduate Page Previews feature (Popups extension) out of Beta Feature | |||
| Resolved | dr0ptp4kt | T129425 Capture hovercards fetches as previews in analytics | |||
| Resolved | dr0ptp4kt | T133067 Verify X-Analytics: preview=1 in stable |
In the Android app, add x-analytics request header with value pageview=1 for both RESTBase and MediaWiki php.api endpoints.
Should hovercards do the same?
In the Android app, add x-analytics request header with value pageview=1 for both RESTBase and MediaWiki php.api endpoints.
Should hovercards do the same?
That seems the simplest alternative. We can update docs when code review is in place.
Sorry I forgot to mention this earlier: One thing that requires investigation if we do header enrichment via JavaScript is whether all ResourceLoader-compatible UAs actually support such client side header enrichment. Does anyone know for a fact?
If we start the practice of enriching X-Analytics by the web client - particularly on such a visible feature - we should consider instituting some sort of JavaScript hook whereby anyone interested in enriching the header client side will do so in a non-destructive manner (i.e., it is additive, there's no possibility of unintentionally wiping someone else's key-value pair in the header, etc.). Unlike the app where there's a small set of developers who have tacit knowledge have the header enrichment piece, on the web there's a relatively larger set of developers and I foresee well intentioned people doing stuff with the header without realizing they might be braking someone else's X-Analytics client side enrichment.
@Jdlrobson, @dr0ptp4kt We just add a header like this:
x-analytics: preview=1
This is for both MW API and RESTBase API usage. See the links for actual implementation. Similarly you can find in the same files the ones for pageview=1. This should be promoted to production in the next couple of days.
Thanks, @bearND.
@Jdlrobson, @Nuria can explain further, but essentially they're okay with the client sending the header.
The moment more than one key-value pair starts to be sent for this header, a more deluxe solution will be required to ensure different client side authors don't trump each other's client-initiated header enrichment.
Loopin @Tbayer here so he knows what to expect, please do not do any code changes quite yet as we are meeting to talk about this in the next couple days.
The moment more than one key-value pair starts to be sent for this header, a more deluxe solution will be required to ensure different client side authors don't trump each other's client-initiated header enrichment.
The header should be formed correctly if we are using the x-analytics extension. It is supposed to hold many keys/values.
Let me try to clarify here the difference between what we have been calling "preview" requests and content consumption (cc @Tbayer)
Preview requests are not consider pageviews because they are mean to represent "content-user-has-not seen". In this sense "prefetch" would a better term to classify them under. An application might prefetch pages to have them ready for the user to consume but until the user has hover over a link the content is not "consumed".
This "consumption" has to be marked with a request to the server in some fashion otherwise there is no way for the system to know what content was viewed from the one that was prefetched.
It could be that hovercards are implemented such that when user hovers the request is made for the content, in that case the UI will be less performant but there is no difference between content consumed and fetched. If that is the case I am not sure tagging requests for hovercards with "preview" is the best idea.
Hopefully this makes sense. I think the title of the task and the description of it are perhaps at odds and that is why this is a bit confusing. Sorry about that.
It could be that hovercards are implemented such that when user hovers the request is made for the content, in that case the UI will be less performant but there is no difference between content consumed and fetched.
This is the way it works.
If that is the case I am not sure tagging requests for hovercards with "preview" is the best idea.
Would you please elaborate? The Android app uses "preview" for link previews, which behave analogously.
Would you please elaborate? The Android app uses "preview" for link previews, which behave analogously.
Indeed. You are correct and I am mistaken. I though android was doing prefetches but it is not.
Then, let's tag (using the x-analytics syntax) requests for hovercards with "preview".
Per our last meeting on this regard: Previews will not be counted as pageviews, we want to separate overall metrics (pageviews) from feature metrics separate. In the case of hovercards given its implementation this distinction is even more important. Having to fetch resources when on hover means that this implementation can probably use some performance improvements and thus its implementation (if broadly used) might change.
Which meeting?
Previews will not be counted as pageviews, we want to separate overall metrics (pageviews) from feature metrics separate. In the case of hovercards given its implementation this distinction is even more important. Having to fetch resources when on hover means that this implementation can probably use some performance improvements and thus its implementation (if broadly used) might change.
@GWicke: We're hoping to use the RESTBase summary service as the primary backing service for Page-Previews. Does RESTBase's logging pipeline match the standard – I hesitate to use the word – one, i.e. forwarding x-analytics headers etc?
@phuedx, all accesses to RESTBase end points traverse text varnishes, which is where logging happens the same way as for other requests. These logs capture both cache hits and misses, which is important for a very cacheable end point like summary.
How should we treat the user's DoNotTrack setting in this context? I suppose the header will be sent only when DNT is false? Or maybe not as the data being sent is not about the user.
Change 283253 had a related patch set uploaded (by Bmansurov):
Add X-Analytics request header when fetching popup data
Right, I don't think a special case is warranted here. If in some future state we were to do something like tag in funnel information, then, yes, most definitely we'd need to consider DNT. But we're not at that point just yet.
Good question!
How should we treat the user's DoNotTrack setting in this context? I suppose the header will be sent only when DNT is false? Or maybe not as the data being sent is not about the user.
Headers in your ajax request are going to be sent regardless of DNT but as @dr0ptp4kt said api requests do not take DNT into account (yet)
FYI that if DNT is set Eventlogging data is not sent.
Change 283253 merged by jenkins-bot:
Add X-Analytics request header when fetching popup data
@dr0ptp4kt any page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_the_bookmaker_controversy for example. Enable the hovercards beta feature and hover over a link.
Using Developer Tools (Network) in Chrome and Live HTTP Headers in Firefox on the desktop, it didn't seem to show up for some reason. Do you happen to see the same?
GET /w/api.php?action=query&format=json&prop=info%7Cextracts%7Cpageimages%7Crevisions&formatversion=2&redirects=true&exintro=true&exsentences=5&explaintext=true&piprop=thumbnail&pithumbsize=300&rvprop=timestamp&titles=Australia_national_cricket_team&smaxage=300&maxage=300&uselang=content HTTP/1.1 Host: en.wikipedia.org User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.11; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/45.0 Accept: application/json, text/javascript, */*; q=0.01 Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest Referer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Cookie: ... Connection: keep-alive
@mbinder, when a task is dragged from the backlog into a sprint because the sprint is idling, is it supposed to get the tag "Unplanned-Sprint-Work"?
Confirmed on latest stable Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari desktop UAs client side.
Confirmed in Apache logs deployment-mediawiki01.deployment-prep.eqiad.wmflabs in beta cluster logs. Notice preview=1.
2016-04-18T19:27:05 299604 <removed> proxy-server/200 252 GET http://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/w/api.php?action=query&format=json&prop=info%7Cextracts%7Cpageimages%7Crevisions&formatversion=2&redirects=true&exintro=true&exsentences=5&explaintext=true&piprop=thumbnail&pithumbsize=300&rvprop=timestamp&titles=Golden_Gate_Bridge&smaxage=300&maxage=300&uselang=content - application/json http://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/San_Francisco <removed>, 127.0.0.1 Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.11; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/45.0 en-US,en;q=0.5 preview=1 - <removed>
The next step should be to verify in Hive once this starts rolling on the train. With the scheduled backup failover scenario running this week, I believe that means we'll need to wait until next week to confirm, though.