Event Protocol

This is for:

Developer

In this article

Search events
Custom context
Opting-in or out of tracking

The Event Protocol is a new standard for sending usage analytics events to Coveo.

The Event Protocol and Relay library are currently in early access. If you’re interested in using the Event Protocol and Relay library, reach out to your Customer Success Manager (CSM).

We highly recommend using the Coveo Headless Commerce controllers or the Relay library, which wrap the complexity of the Event API, over using the Event API directly.

Search events

In contrast with the Coveo UA protocol relying on the Usage Analytics (UA) Write API, the Event Protocol doesn’t require you to log search events. Rather, when you send search requests to the Search API or the Commerce API, the API automatically logs the corresponding search events server-side.

Commerce API server event logging

The Coveo Headless Commerce controllers automatically use EP by default. The library handles server-side event logging automatically, in the same way that it handles client-side search events automatically. Forthcoming Atomic Commerce components will do so as well, and so will Headless and Atomic v3 in general.

In the meantime, in early access, you can also activate server-side event logging in the Commerce API by setting the context.capture parameter to true in your commerce queries.

{
  ...
  "context": {
    ...
    "capture": true, 
  }
}

Activates server-side event logging.

Note

The context.capture parameter is currently true by default, but it will be false by default in a future release.

Search API server event logging

Future releases of Coveo Headless and Atomic will use the Event Protocol by default. The libraries will handle server-side event logging for you automatically.

In the meantime, in early access, you can activate server-side event logging in the Search API by setting the analytics.capture parameter to true in your search requests.

If you do so, be sure to set the analytics.actionCause parameter. See Standard actions and UA reference.

For reporting purposes, also provide as many parameters exposed in the analytics object as possible.

Example:

{
  ...
  "analytics": {
    "capture": true, 
    "actionCause": "searchboxSubmit", 
    "clientId": "9dn3nd88-75ea-3b8d-93nq-1208a732cafc", 
    "clientTimestamp": "2024-04-10T14:01:28.026Z",
    "documentReferrer": "default",
    "originContext": "Search",
    "documentLocation": "https://sports.barca.group/search",
    "documentReferrer": "default",
    "originContext": "Search"
  }
}

	Activates server-side event logging.
	Sets the action cause as specified in Standard actions and UA reference.
	Additional parameters for reporting purposes.

Custom context

Client events

In contrast with the Coveo UA protocol, the Event Protocol doesn’t support logging custom context. Certain Event Protocol schemas support a context parameter, but its format is fixed. That is, such context doesn’t allow you to specify custom keys.

Server events

Support for custom context in server events depends on the Coveo API providing a free-form context parameter. The Search API does expose such a free-form context parameter, allowing you to specify custom context in your search requests. The Search API includes this custom context in the corresponding search events it logs server-side. Coveo Machine Learning models can learn from this context, and you can also leverage it in query pipeline conditions or UA reports.

On the other hand, the Commerce API context parameter has a fixed structure and doesn’t support custom keys. That is, the Commerce API doesn’t support custom context.

Opting-in or out of tracking

You may need to provide users with the ability to opt-in or out of tracking, following the applicable privacy regulations (see Data tracking).

Server events

When you want to prevent search events from being used for analytics purposes, set the capture parameter to false in your search requests. When using the Commerce API, that’s the context.capture parameter, while in the Search API, it’s the analytics.capture parameter. Also, don’t send any data persisted in the browser, such as clientId, since it would constitute tracking.

Commerce API example

{
  ...
  "context": {
    "capture": false,
    ...
  }
}

Search API example

{
  ...
  "analytics": {
    "capture": false,
    ...
  }
}

Note

If you’re using the Coveo Headless Commerce controllers, see Disable and enable analytics.

Client events

Disabling and enabling client-side event logging depends on your implementation.

If you’re using Relay, see Relay: Opting-in or out of tracking.

If you’re using the Coveo Headless Commerce controllers, see Disable and enable analytics.

If you’re using the Event API directly, make sure that your implementation logs events only after users have consented, or haven’t opted out of tracking, depending on the applicable privacy law.