Global objects of Google Analytics

Question

In Google Analytics, there are some global objects:-

For ga.js:-

• gaq
• gat
• pageTracker

Which object guarantees that ga.js is being used?

For analytics.js:-

• ga (can be changed)

Since, the name of global object can be changed, how can we get the actual global object in analytics.js?

Answer 1

For ga.js,

The _gat global object is used to create and retrieve tracker objects, from which all other methods are invoked.

For analytics.js:-

Google Analytics global object can be accessed by window['GoogleAnalyticsObject'];. This will give us the global variable name. To again get the object for that variable we can convert the variable name into object by: window[window['GoogleAnalyticsObject']]

So, in case we want to get the clientId:-

var gaObj = window['GoogleAnalyticsObject'];
window[gaObj](function(tracker) {
    var clientId = tracker.get('clientId');
    console.log(clientId)
});