snowplow / snowplow-android-tracker

Snowplow event tracker for Android. Add analytics to your Android apps and games

Android Analytics for Snowplow

Snowplow is a scalable open-source platform for rich, high quality, low-latency data collection. It is designed to collect high quality, complete behavioral data for enterprise business.

To find out more, please check out the Snowplow website and our documentation.

Snowplow Android Tracker Overview

The Snowplow Android Tracker allows you to add analytics to your mobile apps when using a Snowplow pipeline.

With this tracker you can collect event data from your applications, games or frameworks.

Technical documentation can be found for each tracker in our Documentation.

Demo apps using the Snowplow Android Tracker

Three demo apps are included in this repository: one in Java, one in Kotlin, and one in Kotlin with Jetpack Compose.

Instrument the Android Tracker

Technical Docs	Setup Guide	API Docs
Technical Docs	Setup Guide	API Docs

Maintainers

Contributing
Contributing

Copyright and license

The Snowplow Android Tracker is copyright 2015-present Snowplow Analytics Ltd.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this software except in compliance with the License.

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

snowplow-android-tracker's Issues

Call AsyncTask.get in sendGetData and setPostData will block UI thread

In sendGetData and setPostData in Emitter [0], they call AsyncTask.get to get HTTP response. sendGetData and setPostData in Emitter are called in UI thread since they use AsyncTasks. However, they also use AsyncTask.get [1] to get HTTP response, which will block the UI thread if HTTP response is not returned. It might slow down UI thread and cause bad UI experience.

[0] https://github.com/snowplow/snowplow-android-tracker/blob/master/snowplow-android-tracker/src/main/java/com/snowplowanalytics/snowplow/tracker/android/emitter/Emitter.java#L181-L217
[1] https://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/AsyncTask.html#get()

Refactor AsyncTask to RxJava

https://github.com/ReactiveX/RxJava

Add Quickstart section to README

Add test app

Fix library dependency warnings in Android Studio

We've put a hack on the pom file we generate by manually adding the dependencies to it:

pom.withXml {
    def dependenciesNode = asNode().appendNode('dependencies')

    //Iterate over the compile dependencies (we don't want the test ones), adding a <dependency> node for each
    configurations.compile.allDependencies.each {
        def dependencyNode = dependenciesNode.appendNode('dependency')
        dependencyNode.appendNode('groupId', it.group)
        dependencyNode.appendNode('artifactId', it.name)
        dependencyNode.appendNode('version', it.version)
    }
}

Android Studio complains with an error that we can't have dependencies which would give the user a wrong impression.

Option 1

A possible solution would be to:

1. Remove the pom file hack
2. Add in our documentation, that your gradle should have the tracker-core along with the android-tracker to look something like this:

compile 'com.snowplowanalytics:android-tracker:0.1.1'
compile 'com.snowplowanalytics:snowplow-java-tracker-core:0.1.2'

Option 2

Would be to add the android-tracker to the snowplow-java-tracker build, and use the dependency project (':snowplow-java-tracker-core')

Option 3

Add the jar file of the tracker-core that we are currently using, into the android /libs project.
This let's us maintain a versioning of the core instead of the way option 2, which doesn't let us do that.

Create an option to opt-out of data collection

See comments in snowplow/snowplow-ios-tracker#27 on how to implement this.

Fix Emitter NPE when device is not connected

Crashing app

Fix data types for geolocation_context

See snowplow/iglu-central#24

Emitter.addToBuffer does a sync write to database

Emitter.addToBuffer can lead to network on UI thread if set to immediately flush

Raised by @hamidp

Target latest SDK version (21)

Use Google Play Services' analytic-specific library (6.5+)

Play Services will be splitting up their massive library into smaller sets. When this comes out we should update to use only the analytics part that contains the Advertising ID.

Granular Dependency Management
As we’ve continued to add more APIs across the wide range of Google services, it can be hard to maintain a lean app, particularly if you're only using a portion of the available APIs. Now with Google Play services 6.5, you’ll be able to depend only on a minimal common library and the exact APIs your app needs. This makes it very lightweight to get started with Google Play services.

See: http://android-developers.blogspot.ca/2014/11/google-play-services-65.html

Fix sending a flushBuffer twice stops the database from removing pending flags on events

In flushBuffer we re-initialize the indexArray that holds the events with the pending flag set. So pending events are eventually forgotten.

The fix is to make a copy of the indexArray when right before we hit the AsyncTask and use that copy to call EventStore.removeEvent.

Core: create an option to opt-out of data collection

Sample reference: https://segment.io/docs/libraries/ios/#how-can-my-users-opt-out-of-data-collection-

See snowplow/snowplow-ios-tracker#27

Change SLF4J logging to use Android logger

i.e. All logger.error("...") should be Log.e(TAG, "...")

Fix tracker failing to retrieve Advertising ID if Play Services isn't available

If a user doesn't add the Play Services or we get GooglePlayServicesNotAvailableException, we should handle this by not adding the advertising ID.

Note: This can crash the Android Tracker

Android Studio requires you to delete all subproject settings.gradle to work

First off, this isn't really a bug we can fix, but it spoils development immensely.

Because of a bug in Android Studio, there is no way to resolve subproject symbols for projects that are more that one level down. The temporary "fix" for this, is to delete the settings.gradle files for all subprojects in the snowplow-android-tracker to allow AS to recognize android-tracker and java-tracker-core as modules.

Steps:

• Delete java-tracker/settings.gradle
• Delete java-tracker/java-tracker-core/settings.gradle

Things we can do:

• If this is still an issue when we release the android tracker, we need to document this in the Setup/Troubleshooting Guide.

Notes:
We can't delete the settings.gradle the other projects since we require them to function as their own projects. This is mentioned by others in the bug report as well, so this is the only workaround atm.

Leaving without milestone or assignee for now.

Update CHANGELOG with missing tickets

Specifically: #19

Bump Core version to 0.1.3

Core: add in-client sessionization

This ticket should track the implementation done here: snowplow/snowplow-ios-tracker#83

Add config switch to access permissions-requiring context

e.g. carrier.

For reference see: snowplow/snowplow-ios-tracker#18 (comment)

Fix Gradle Dynamic Version linting warning

Avoid using + in version numbers; can lead to unpredictable and unrepeatable builds
(com.jakewharton.sdkmanager:gradle-plugin:0.12.+)

7 }
8 dependencies {
9 classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:1.0.0'
10 classpath 'com.jakewharton.sdkmanager:gradle-plugin:0.12.+'
11 }
12 }

Remove dependency on Java Tracker Core

Add Android Advertising ID

http://developer.android.com/google/play-services/id.html

As a reminder, please note that starting 1 August 2014, new apps and app updates distributed through Google Play must use the advertising ID in lieu of any other persistent identifiers for any advertising purposes, on devices that support the advertising ID.

Clarify BuildConfig's VERSION_NAME

Looks like this needs to be kept in sync with the tracker version...

Add CHANGELOG

Fix addToBuffer doesn't always hit flushBuffer

We call on super.flushBuffer() which is means we do get affected by snowplow/snowplow-java-tracker#79. There isn't any need to call on super, so we can remove this from the android-tracker.

Advertising ID retrieval creates new thread

Advertising ID is obtained by creating a new thread, which is considered very bad practice.

Raised by @hamidp

Set tv to andr-0.1.0

It's probably currently java-0.1.0 i.e. currently it's inherited from the Java Tracker, but shouldn't be.

Advertising ID may not be fetched before events sent

Spotted by @hamidp

Add dedicated Vagrant setup

Refactor HttpClient to OkHttp

https://github.com/square/okhttp

Add .travis.yml for CI

Core: include rooted/jailbroken in mobile context

It may be useful to check whether the mobile device is rooted/jailbroken since those devices can misbehave in their own special way. This can be added into the mobile context as another attribute for iOS and Android; both checks can be easily done as well:

Android: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1101380/determine-if-running-on-a-rooted-device

iOS: http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/ios-application-security-part-23-jailbreak-detection-evasion/

(@alexanderdean if you think this is a good idea, I'll create a separate issue for iOS)

Remove locally stored bufferOption

We have a BufferOption value stored the Android trackers Emitter class right now because the tracker core doesn't have access to it.

A fix would be to adding a setter/getter OR making bufferOption in java core protected.

In the Android tracker, we can then:

1. Remove the override method setBufferOption.
2. Adjust addToBuffer(Payload) accordingly.

Add README

Cannot publish Android Tracker 0.1.2

On a 100% fresh build using:

snowplow/ansible-playbooks#34

I get:

$ ./gradlew build
...
:snowplow-android-tracker:generateDebugResValues UP-TO-DATE
:snowplow-android-tracker:generateDebugResources UP-TO-DATE
:snowplow-android-tracker:mergeDebugResources UP-TO-DATE
:snowplow-android-tracker:processDebugManifest UP-TO-DATE
:snowplow-android-tracker:processDebugResources FAILED

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* What went wrong:
Execution failed for task ':snowplow-android-tracker:processDebugResources'.
> java.io.IOException: Cannot run program "/home/vagrant/android-sdk-linux/build-tools/19.1.0/aapt": error=2, No such file or directory

Implement vagrant push scripting for deployment

Add warning that Version.java is auto-generated

Evaluate queue options

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/data/data-storage.html

Make the default Emitter method POST for Android

Make an Android test app

Something simple that lets you test sending events and can be sideloaded with the apk.

Things it should do:

• Text field to enter collector uri
• Options to set BufferOption value
• Send fake track events for each track* we have
• More to add..

Create an FAQ for Android documentation

With Android there are several occasions where you can ask, why is this happening? So we can add an FAQ section to counter these:

Here is an initial list of things to document in it:

• Add permissions for INTERNET
• Crashing when using Subject with Context but not adding Play Services
• Project module not recognized (See: #10)
• Make sure java-core is updated to the right version

Bump Core version to 0.2.0

Add Otto support

Would be really cool to add Snowplow as an integration into Otto

http://square.github.io/otto/

Unscheduled

Consider moving the Android Tracker into the snowplow-java-tracker repo

Consider: https://github.com/keenlabs/KeenClient-Java

Update Java Tracker Core to 0.1.4

This has been done - just adding a ticket for the papertrail...

Update completePayload to take timestamp as a long

Update setup wiki with java-core dependency

Needed for version 0.1.1 documentation.

Fix Emitter encodes the slash in /tp2

URI.Builder encodes the '/tp2' part of our URI for post requests making it /com.snowplowanalytics.snowplow%2Ftp2.

We can fix this by using appendEncodedPath instead of appendPath.