Allow testing on localhost

[metmarkosaric]

"In some cases, single person/small teams might set things up on localhost first and from there do all their building/testing, instead of on a dedicated staging site. And so with a free trial, it would be nice to be able to see how the product would work on localhost before deciding whether or not to go with it. Also, testing out custom events from localhost would be nice too. Something like: plausible('config', { debug: true });"

(feedback via email)

UPDATE: We now have the plausible.local.js extension that allows you to track stats on localhost too. Read more here. Thanks @riderx for this contribution!

[JH7]

First things first: Thanks for creating Plausible, it's been a pleasure to use for our web app project so far!

We are currently running into this "localhost problem" from a different perspective. We use Meteor and Cordova to bake our existing Meteor web app into a native app. In the native app, web pages are stored on the device and then served from localhost. Thus, we are currently not able to track interactions in the native app.

A possible solution to that could be the adding of another tracker script mode.

analytics/tracker/src/plausible.js

Line 20 in ff32218

if (/^localhost$|^127(?:\.[0-9]+){0,2}\.[0-9]+$|^(?:0*\:)*?:?0*1$/.test(location.hostname) || location.protocol === 'file:') return warn('localhost');

This line could then be enclosed e.g. by a {{#if localhostMode}}.

[ukutaht]

Agreed. Sounds like there's no other way for you to use Plausible. Making a localhost mode is probably the best solution.

[Sha-code]

We have the same issue for our apps https://Captime.app (angular capacitor) and https://mimesis.fun (react capacitor), just a localhost mode will make it works for us !

[riderx]

Same here i need it for capacitor app (Cordova like)

[riderx]

@ukutaht @metmarkosaric do you think it can came to the product soon ?

[riderx]

I did a Pr for that ! #1218
I hope it will helps !

[metmarkosaric]

We now have the plausible.local.js extension that allows you to track stats on localhost too. Read more here. Thanks @riderx for this contribution!

[alvarlagerlof]

You should probably mark this as an answer

[elron]

Just for better understanding,
should I have two separated plausable sites, one for development (script.local.js) and one for production (script.js)?