Hello,
I'm not a developer myself so I'm not intimate to server vs. client side implications, but I am in charge of designing technical specs for our implementation. I recently found this article from a previous discussion posted on the board: https://marketing.adobe.com/developer/documentation/data-insertion/c-limitations I have a couple of questions after reading this:
Thanks!
Solved! Go to Solution.
1. Client-side implementation is standard and allow for enhanced out-of-box functionality (e.g., data on browsers/user agents, operating systems, screen resolutions, device types). In theory, it's possible to replicate this functionality in a server-side implementation, but at that point you're recreating the wheel and might as well build your own analytics solution.
2. DTM is, at heart, a way to inject JavaScript into a page without having to jump through any development hoops in pushing actual page code changes. If you're going with a server-side implementation, I can't think of any use for DTM (as the JavaScript would be injected into the client-side application).
A typical DTM implementation, to my knowledge, would be:
1. Client-side implementation is standard and allow for enhanced out-of-box functionality (e.g., data on browsers/user agents, operating systems, screen resolutions, device types). In theory, it's possible to replicate this functionality in a server-side implementation, but at that point you're recreating the wheel and might as well build your own analytics solution.
2. DTM is, at heart, a way to inject JavaScript into a page without having to jump through any development hoops in pushing actual page code changes. If you're going with a server-side implementation, I can't think of any use for DTM (as the JavaScript would be injected into the client-side application).
A typical DTM implementation, to my knowledge, would be:
What about implementing variables that you know will always have a specific value on a page, like for example the pageName variable, would that make sense to implement server-side? If so, would it still be preferrable to implement client-side?
Views
Replies
Total Likes
With respect to the Adobe Analytics implementation, it's client-side.
From my last post -- in point 3, in addition to adding the DTM bootstrap code you would add a small <script> section to set any variables that were effectively generated server side.
So, for your home page, your page would have your back-end system generate the typical HTML, and then just add, for example:
<script> dataLayer = {}; // an empty object to store variables from server-side logic dataLayer.pageName = "pageName/to/populate/Adobe/Analytics"; dataLayer.channel = "channel_for_Adobe_Analytics"; dataLayer.prop1 = "prop1_value_for_Adobe_Analytics"; </script>
You have several options for mining this data in DTM; the most straight-forward way would be to use a "Data Element" to look for the applicable JavaScript variables and send those over to your Adobe Analytics implementation.
So, your server-side process writes variables into the page code that are then read by Adobe Analytics on the client-side.
This pattern (creating a data layer, regardless of whether you actually name it "dataLayer" like my example) is quite common for larger websites where server-side knowledge needs to be transferred to client-side applications but not actually written to the screen.
Views
Likes
Replies