How do I limit collection for authenticated pages in an SPA? #168

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1. mdmower-csnw commented on May 13, 2025

   

   mdmower-csnw

   on May 13, 2025

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   I still hope to get a response from a maintainer, but for any other users that stumble upon this question...

   I'm able to work around this issue by setting window[`ga-disable-${gtag_id}`] = true; prior to navigating to authenticated-only pages and window[`ga-disable-${gtag_id}`] = false; when navigating to anonymously accessible pages. The GTag ID can be one of two values, depending on whether dap-dev-env is set, so a small lookup helps:

   function findGtagId() {
     for (const script of document.scripts) {
       // https://github.com/digital-analytics-program/gov-wide-code/blob/1817f8a53949c98953ec6b6015135c686805c99d/Universal-Federated-Analytics.js#L91
       if (script.src.startsWith('https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=')) {
         const id = new URL(script.src).searchParams.get('id');
         if (id) return id;
       }
     }
   }

   And specifically for React, if your private routes are wrapped by a component, a single useEffect hook can both disable and reenable analytics when the component is mounted and unmounted, respectively:

     useEffect(() => {
       const gtagId = findGtagId();
       if (!gtagId) return;
   
       window[`ga-disable-${gtagId}`] = true;
       return () => {
         window[`ga-disable-${gtagId}`] = false;
       };
     }, []);

   The analytics documentation makes it sound like this approach wouldn't work since it is set after GTag has loaded, but in practice, it does seem to work fine for SPAs.

   Aside: the approach that I thought would work...

   function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
   // does not work
   gtag('set', { 'send_page_view': false });

   ... does not work. In this case, I believe it is because history change events cause the page view events to be sent, and that process doesn't appear to check this setting prior to collection.
2. sanason

   added this to DAPon Apr 29, 2026
3. github-project-automation

   moved this to Todo in DAPon Apr 29, 2026