How is Matomo counting visit_total_time?

General questions
1

I’am digging in the code to get how is piwik calculating the Time on Page.

I think it is not a simple visit_first_action_time minus visit_last_action_time.

I can’t find the proper code for that.
I searched for “ping” and the fieldnames but i do not find anything useful.
Where is the ping treated? The PingRequestProcessor is not very helpful.
Thanks for any hint in advance.

2

Hallo hamburger,

your question is not so simple to answer. It is necessary to show your matomo settings / tracking code. There are many settings and modifyings to manipulate the result of the time on page.

Default, matomo tracks the time on page accuracy after a second action of the visitor and not on the last page (last page always 0 seconds). All visits with only one action are 0 seconds. A click of a (external) link is an action. The first/start time is the loading of the webpage document. 30 minutes after the last visitor action, the “visit” is ended and a new action of this visitor is tracked as a new visit.

You can manipulate all this with visit_standard_length or enableHeartBeatTimer (default 30 seconds) or own JavaScript rules with beforeunload or setInterval, setTimeout, clearInterval with _paq.push(['ping']);

Here additional tracking code for more accurace time on page tracking:

_paq.push(['enableHeartBeatTimer', 10]); // every 10 seconds

var myheartbeat = setInterval(function() {
  _paq.push(['ping']);
}, 1000); // every 1 second
setTimeout(function() {
  clearInterval(myheartbeat);
}, 11000); // disable it after 11 seconds

window.addEventListener('beforeunload', function(e) {
  _paq.push(['ping']); // send a "ping" (hidden action) on the non-action leaving of the webpage
});
3

thx melbao
my question was more regarding the php-code.
Where is the php-code witch calculate and update the visit_total_time.
Also where and how is the ping handling done.

4

OK hamburger, i don’t know it. The term visit_total_time is correct. It is used in the database table log_visit, and logical it is possible to find it in the PHP code.For this, make a grep -r -i 'visit_total_time' /path/to/matomo/* on the command line (Linux, Linux Server). You can do it with a non-used and unzipped matomo installation package in a separate folder. Good luck!

5

Hi @hamburger,
@melbaois is true: when there is a page view [A] then another action (event, following page view [B], etc) within the visit_standard_length time frame, Matomo set the page [A] visit duration to the delay between page view [A] and last action on page [A] (or page view [B]). On the last page, if there is no other event, page visit duration is 0. Then the visit total time is the sum of all page views durations…

6

There is a explicit /plugins/CoreHome/Columns/VisitTotalTime.php. Please look at that.