usagestats 1.0

Usage

You can easily collect information from your program by adding usagestats to your project’s requirements and using the library. Here is an example:

import usagestats
import sys


optin_prompt = usagestats.Prompt(enable='cool_program --enable-stats',
                                 disable='cool_program --disable-stats')

# Location where to store stats
# Also allocates a unique ID for the user
# The version is important, since the information you log (or the format)
# might change in later versions of your program
stats = usagestats.Stats('~/.myprog/usage_stats',
                         optin_prompt,
                         'https://usagestats.example.org/',
                         unique_user_id=True,
                         version='0.1')


def main():
    if len(sys.argv) < 2:
        pass
    elif sys.argv.get(1) == '--enable-stats':
        stats.enable_reporting()
        sys.exit(0)
    elif sys.argv.get(1) == '--disable-stats':
        stats.disable_reporting()
        sys.exit(0)

    if sys.version_info < (3,):
        # Stores some info, will be reported when submit() is called
        stats.note({'mode': 'compatibility'})

    # Report things
    stats.submit(
        # Dictionary containing the info
        {'what': 'Ran the program'},
        # Flags making usagestats insert more details
        usagestats.OPERATING_SYSTEM,  # Operating system/distribution
        usagestats.PYTHON_VERSION,    # Python version info
        usagestats.SESSION_TIME,      # Time since Stats object was created
    )


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

submit() will, by default, store the info in the specified directory. Nothing will be reported until the user opts in; a message will simply be printed to stderr:

Uploading usage statistics is currently DISABLED
Please help us by providing anonymous usage statistics; you can enable this
by running:
    cool_program --enable-stats
If you do not want to see this message again, you can run:
    cool_program --disable-stats
Nothing will be uploaded before you opt in.

Server

To collect the reports, any server will do; the reports are uploaded via POST as a LF-separated list of key:value pairs. A simple script for mod_wsgi is included; it writes each report to a separate file. Writing your own implementation in your language of choice (PHP, Java) with your own backend should be fairly straightforward.