Question

Good afternoon! I’ve been searching StackOverflow and the web for about 24 hours now, and I haven’t found an answer yet. I hope I’m missing something simple that a more experienced API user can point out for me.

I’m querying the Google Analytics API using their .NET library. This request works:

https://www.google.com/analytics/feeds/data?start-index=1&max-results=500&dimensions=ga:date&end-date=2011-01-06&ids=ga:________&metrics=ga:visitors,ga:visits&start-date=2011-01-06

…but I’d like to filter the results. I’ve tried a single very simple filter which does not require URL encoding:

filters=ga:city!@Minsk

All I get is the maddeningly vague “400 bad request” error. I get the same result using the equals operator:

DataQuery  query = new DataQuery(URL);
...
query.Filters = "ga:city==Minsk"

Ditto if I encode the equals signs as %3D. This gets translated into “ga:city%253D%253DMinsk”, according to the error message. I’ve tried single-quoting “Minsk”, and double-quoting it; no luck.

I’m stumped. Any ideas? Thanks!

Answer 1

Found it. It turns out that filters have to be “compatible” with the dimensions and metrics actually expressed in a query. Dropping ga:visitors allowed me to apply most of the filters I needed, though the combination of ga:pagePath and ga:campaign is not allowed with ga:visits… for some reason. Here’s the detail, but be warned: you may end up cross-eyed.

http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/gdata/gdataReferenceValidCombos.html

Oh, and using the .NET library you do not need to encode equals signs or spaces in your filters. I structured my filters like this:

private static readonly string  Filter = string.Join
  (
  ";", new string[]
    {
    "ga:city!=Simi Valley",  // URL encoding is handled for you
    "ga:pagePath!@/splash",
    "ga:pagePath!@static_test",
    "ga:networkLocation!@spring",
    "ga:networkLocation!@equinix asia pacific pte ltd"
    // ...
    }
  );

Hope this helps someone!