RefInspector (RefInspector v2.1.0)

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Referer parser library.

Preparation

  1. Verify your supervision setup according to RefInspector.Supervisor
  2. Revise the default configuration values of RefInspector.Config and adjust to your project/environment where necessary
  3. Download a copy of the parser database file(s) as outlined in RefInspector.Downloader

Usage

iex> RefInspector.parse("http://www.google.com/search?q=ref_inspector")
%RefInspector.Result{
  medium: "search",
  referer: "http://www.google.com/search?q=ref_inspector",
  source: "Google",
  term: "ref_inspector"
}

Passing a referer string will result in a %RefInspector.Result{} returned with the following information (if available):

  • :referer will contain the unmodified referer passed to the parser.

  • :medium will be :internal (if configured), :unknown if no matching database entry could be found, or a string matching the entry in the database. Detecting a referer as :internal requires additional configuration (see RefInspector.Config).

  • :source will be :unknown if no known source could be detected. Otherwise it will contain a string with the provider's name.

  • :term will be :none if no query parameters were given or the provider has no configured term parameters in the database (mostly relevant for social or email referers). If a configured term parameter was found it will be an unencoded string (possibly empty).

Note about Result Medium Atoms/Binaries

The medium atoms :unknown and :internal are specially treated to reflect two special cases. One being reserved for completely unknown referers and one being for configured domains to not be parsed.

Your database can still include "unknown" and "internal" sections. These will be parsed fully and returned using a binary as the medium instead of the aforementioned atoms.

Summary

Functions

parse(ref, opts \\ [database: :default])

Parses a referer.

ready?(database \\ :default)

Checks if RefInspector is ready to perform lookups.

reload(opts \\ [])

Reloads all databases.

Functions

parse(ref, opts \\ [database: :default])

@spec parse(URI.t() | String.t() | nil, Keyword.t()) :: RefInspector.Result.t()

Parses a referer.

Passing an empty referer ("" or nil) will directly return an empty result without accessing the database.

ready?(database \\ :default)

@spec ready?(atom()) :: boolean()

Checks if RefInspector is ready to perform lookups.

The true == ready? definition is made on the assumption that if there is at least one referer in the database then lookups can be performed.

Checking the state is done using the currently active database. Any potentially concurrent reload requests are not considered.

reload(opts \\ [])

@spec reload(Keyword.t()) :: :ok

Reloads all databases.

You can pass [async: true|false] to define if the reload should happen in the background or block your calling process until completed.