PostHog configuration in Codebuff codebase.

In this article, we review PostHog configuration in Codebuff codebase. We will look at:

What is PostHog?
analytics.ts in Codebuff.

I study patterns used in an open source project found on Github Trending. For this week, I reviewed Codebuff codebase and wrote this article.

What is PostHog?

PostHog is a single platform for people who build things. They help product engineers build successful products. Literally every piece of SaaS that a product engineer needs. This includes tools for building products, talking to customers, and making sense of all your customer data.

PostHog provides as apps by stage.

Startup/side project

Growth

Scale

Explore all their apps in Product OS.

analytics.ts in Codebuff

I found trackEvent function being called in recreateShell as shown below:


export const recreateShell = async (cwd: string) => {
  persistentProcess = await createPersistentProcess(cwd)
  trackEvent(AnalyticsEvent.SHELL_RECREATED, { persistentProcess })
}

This trackEvent function is imported as shown below at the top of the file:


import { trackEvent } from '../utils/analytics'

trackEvent definition

This trackEvent function is defined as shown below in utils/analytics.ts:


export function trackEvent(
  event: AnalyticsEvent,
  properties?: Record<string, any>,
) {
  const distinctId = currentUserId
  if (!distinctId) {
    return
  }
  if (!client) {
    if (process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_CB_ENVIRONMENT === 'prod') {
      throw new Error('Analytics client not initialized')
    }
    return
  }
 
  if (process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_CB_ENVIRONMENT !== 'prod') {
    if (DEBUG_DEV_EVENTS) {
      console.log('Analytics event sent', {
        event,
        properties,
      })
    }
    return
  }
 
  client.capture({
    distinctId,
    event,
    properties,
  })
}

The below block prevents sending events in any env other than prod by simply logging it:


if (process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_CB_ENVIRONMENT !== 'prod') {
    if (DEBUG_DEV_EVENTS) {
      console.log('Analytics event sent', {
        event,
        properties,
      })
    }
    return
  }

client is a global variable in initialized as shown below:


let client: PostHog | undefined 
...
export function initAnalytics() {
...
  client = new PostHog(process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_POSTHOG_API_KEY, {
    host: process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_POSTHOG_HOST_URL,
    enableExceptionAutocapture:
      process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_CB_ENVIRONMENT === 'prod',
  })
...

About me:

Hey, my name is Ramu Narasinga. I study codebase architecture in large open-source projects.

Email: ramu.narasinga@gmail.com

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