Data collection

This guide provides practical examples of using the Next.js SDK to enrich user profiles and sessions with information relevant to your business.

User data

You can persist user-related information in one of the two ways described below depending on whether it is related to the user's profile or their current session.

Profile data

You can enrich user profiles with details collected via forms, surveys, or other means.

These pieces of information, called attributes, are categorized as standard or custom depending on whether it is generic or specific to your organization.

Standard attributes

These are predefined attributes that are common most businesses, such as the user's name, email, and interests.

You can set standard attributes using the user.edit method. For example, let's say you have a newsletter subscription form, and you want to add the email address to the user profile on Croct.

This is what it would look like:

import type {FormEvent} from 'react';
import {useCroct} from '@croct/plug-next';

export function NewsletterForm() {
  const croct = useCroct();
  const subscribe = event => {
    const form = new FormData(event.currentTarget);
    const email = form.get('email');

    // Your logic to persist the email
    api.subscribe(email);

    croct.user.edit()
      .set('name', email)
      .save();
  };

  return (
    <form onSubmit={subscribe}>
      📫 Subscribe to our newsletter!
      <input type="email" placeholder="Email"/>
      <button type="submit">Subscribe</button>
    </form>
  );
}

The user.edit method returns a Patch instance that allows you to chain multiple operations together.

You could alternatively write:

const patch = croct.user.edit();
patch.set('name', email);

await patch.save();

When you call save, it saves changes to the user profile and returns a promise that confirms the operation.

You can then access standard attributes in your queries using the user variable:

user's email ends with "@croct.com"

For a complete list of attributes, see User profile reference.

Custom attributes

In addition to the standard attributes, you can add custom attributes to enrich user profiles with information relevant to your business.

For example, let's say you have a SaaS application and you want to ask your users about their area of expertise so you can personalize the onboarding experience.

This is what it would look like:

import {useCroct} from '@croct/plug-next';

export function ExpertiseSelector() {
  const croct = useCroct();

  const onChange = event => {
    croct.user.edit()
      .set('custom.expertise', event.target.value)
      .save();
  };

  return (
    <select onChange={onChange}>
      <option value="Engineering">Engineering</option>
      <option value="Design">Design</option>
      <option value="Marketing">Marketing</option>
    </select>
  );
}

Note that custom attributes are prefixed with custom to avoid conflicts with standard attributes. However, you do not need to include the prefix in your queries:

user's expertise is "Engineering"

Session data

Besides user profiles, you can also store information relevant to the user's current session.

Storing session information can help you keep track of important the user's current session that may not be relevant to their profile. For example, you can store the plan the user selected on the pricing page, or any other information you want to record during the user's visit.

To store session information, use the session.edit method:

import {useCroct} from '@croct/plug-next';

export function PlanCard({plan, price}) {
  const croct = useCroct();

  const onSelect = () => {
    croct.session.edit()
      .set('plan', plan)
      .save();
  };

  return (
    <div>
      <strong>{plan}</strong>
      <p>${price}</p>
      <button onClick={onSelect}>Select</button>
    </div>
  );
}

In the same way as with user profiles, the session.edit method returns a Patch instance that allows you to chain multiple operations together.

const patch = croct.session.edit();
patch.set('plan', plan);

await patch.save();

When you call save, it saves changes to the session and returns a promise that confirms the operation. You can then access session information in your queries using the session variable:

session's plan is "premium"

For a complete list of attributes, see Session reference.

User identity

By default, all users are considered anonymous. However, if your application has logged-in areas, you may want to link the Croct user profile with your application's user ID. This allows you to personalize the user experience consistently across devices and sessions.

The SDK offers two options for identifying users, which you can choose depending on how you manage user sessions in your application.