Identify
Detailed technical description of the Identify API call.
The identify
call lets you identify a visiting user and associate them to their actions. It also lets you record the traits about them like their name, email address, etc.
As a best practice, make sure identify
is called at the start of every session or page load for logged-in users, if possible. This will ensure all their latest traits are captured.
When should I call identify
?
identify
?Ideally, you should call identify
in the following scenarios:
After a user registers on your website or app
After a user logs in to your site or app
When a user updates their information, e.g., residential address, email ID
When you load a page accessible by a logged-in user: Although this is optional, many tools (such as Intercom, for example) require an initial identify call to know who the user is when they first start the session.
Sample payload
A sample payload for the identify
event after removing the common fields mentioned in the Common Fields section is as shown:
The corresponding event that generates the above payload via the JavaScript SDK is as shown:
Identify fields
The identify
call has the following fields in addition to the Common Fields:
Field
Type
Presence
Description
userId
String
Optional, if anonymousId
is set.
Your user's unique identifier. Every identify
call requires a userId
or an anonymousId
.
traits
Object
Optional
Includes the traits of the user such as their name
, email
, etc. For more more information, check the Traits section below.
User ID vs Anonymous ID
RudderStack requires every identify
call to have either a userId
or an anonymousId
. This section highlights the difference between the two.
User ID
A user ID (userId
) uniquely identifies your user present in your database. It is a permanent identifier of your customer which never changes - like a database ID.
For identify
calls, you should include a userId
as often as possible to identify the most up to date traits of the customer.
We strongly recommend using a database ID as the userId
instead of usernames or email addresses. This is because the user may update their username or email address at any point in the future. Instead, you can pass these attributes as traits.
Anonymous ID
There are instances where you may get a visitor on your website/app who may or may not be your customer. Nonetheless, you still want to track their actions and tie them to various events, page views, and traits. In such cases, you should use an Anonymous ID (anonymousId
) to identify this user.
An anonymousId can be any identifier. For instance, you can use a session ID corresponding to the visitor's session. If you don't have a readily available identifier, we recommend generating a UUID.
RudderStack's web and mobile SDKs automatically use anonymous IDs to track unknown users on your website or mobile apps, so you don't have to worry about including an anonymousId
explicitly.
Identify traits
Traits are bits of user information included in an identify
call. Some example of traits include age, gender, or some specific details, e.g. if a user has a premium or a basic plan.
RudderStack has some reserved traits that it handles in special ways. These are listed in the table below:
Trait
Type
Description
id
String
User's unique ID.
firstName
String
User's first name.
lastName
String
User's last name.
name
String
Full name of the user. If you have already passed the firstName
and lastName
, RudderStack will automatically fill this field.
age
Number
User's age.
email
String
User's email address.
phone
String
User's phone number.
address
Object
User's street address. This can optionally contain either/all of the following fields:
city
country
postalCode
state
street
birthday
Date
User's date of birth.
company
Object
User's company. This can optionally contain either/all of the following fields:
name
(String)id
(String / Number)industry
(String)employee_count
(Number)plan
(String)
createdAt
Date
Date of user's account creation. We recommend using the ISO-8601 date string format.
description
String
User's description.
gender
String
User's gender.
title
String
User's title related to their position in their company.
username
String
User's username. This should be unique for every user.
website
String
User's website.
avatar
String
URL of the user's avatar image.
Different destinations recognize some of the above traits differently. For example, Mixpanel recognizes createdAt
as $created
, while Intercom recognizes it as created_at
.
With RudderStack, you don't have to worry about these inconsistencies at all, as it handles these destination-specific conversions automatically.
Passing traits to an identify
call
identify
callRudderStack lets you pass traits to an identify
call. These traits will be stored in a cookie on your browser or mobile device and will be passed automatically to all the subsequent calls.
An example of how you can pass traits to an identify
call from our JavaScript SDK is shown in the following code snippet. You can check our other SDKs for more examples.
In the above example, {name: "username", gender: "male"}
are the traits stored in a cookie and passed along all the subsequent calls.
Contact us
For queries on any of the sections covered in this guide, you can contact us or start a conversation in our Slack community.
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