Under the hood with: Matomo's Javascript

Goal:
Pedagogically poke around: get to know how Matomo attaches Javascript to your website.

Method:
We will just "mess around".

Warmup:
Open a web page which is running Matomo Javascript Tracker.

Feel free to open your own website. Or you could load your browser with a public website that uses Matomo's Javascript tracker.  At the time of this writing, this includes, westerndigital.com, bundesliga.de, oebb.at, msufcu.org, telummedia.com, bcferries.com, and 1.6% of the internet.**

Lesson 1:
Open any website which has javascript from Matomo already (see above).
Open the browser dev tools >> console (I am using Firefox devtools, so adapt if you're on Chrome/Safari/Brave/Arc browser)
In Console type _paq
You are now seeing the Piwik object. Objects are JS data structures, similar to arrays but they can nest. And instead of just storing strings and numbers, they can store executable code. Notice that most of the _paq object is functions.  This _paq is named for Piwik still, from when that was Matomo's old name. (There is a history link at the base of Matomo's home page if you are curious.)

Do not try to store values in _paq. It is intended to be a place to run commands, as in _paq.push();

Lesson 2:
You can see all available methods by entering this in the browser console... window.Matomo.getAsyncTrackers()[0]

Optional Reading: https://developer.matomo.org/guides/tracking-javascript-guide
Optional Reading: https://developer.matomo.org/api-reference/tracking-javascript

**Some web pages use Matomo without JS. (Turns out that Javascript is just one of the four ways to track visitors at a website, but JS is the most common, by far.) And in some cases there will be no Matomo code unless you click Yes on a consent banner.