App Center Analytics (React Native)

Artikel
11/28/2022

Important

Visual Studio App Center is scheduled for retirement on March 31, 2025. While you can continue to use Visual Studio App Center until it is fully retired, there are several recommended alternatives that you may consider migrating to.

Learn more about support timelines and alternatives.

App Center Analytics helps you understand user behavior and customer engagement to improve your app. The SDK automatically captures session count and device properties like model, OS version, etc. You can define your own custom events to measure things that matter to you. All the information captured is available in the App Center portal for you to analyze the data.

Follow the Getting started section if you haven't set up the SDK in your application yet.

Session and device information

Once you add App Center Analytics to your app and the SDK is started, it automatically tracks sessions and device properties like OS Version, model, etc.

Custom events

Track your own custom events with up to 20 properties to understand the interaction between your users and the app.

Once you've started the SDK, use the trackEvent method to track your events with properties. You can send up to 200 distinct event names. Also, there's a maximum limit of 256 characters per event name and 125 characters per event property name and event property value.

// import App Center Analytics at the top of the file.
import Analytics from 'appcenter-analytics';

Analytics.trackEvent('Video clicked', { Category: 'Music', FileName: 'favorite.avi' });

This function returns a promise, the success case returns an empty string and the error case returns the error.

Properties for events are optional; if you just want to track an event, use this instead:

Analytics.trackEvent('Video clicked');

Enable or disable App Center Analytics at runtime

You can enable and disable App Center Analytics at runtime. If you disable it, the SDK won't collect any more analytics information for the app.

await Analytics.setEnabled(false);

This function returns a promise that resolves to void.

To enable App Center Analytics again, use the same API but pass true as a parameter.

await Analytics.setEnabled(true);

The state is persisted in the device's storage across application launches.

Check if App Center Analytics is enabled

You can also check if App Center Analytics is enabled or not.

const enabled = await Analytics.isEnabled();

This function returns a promise that resolves to a boolean.

Wait for JS to enable App Center Analytics

If you wish to collect analytics information for your app users but want to get user permission first, you have the option to not enable analytics on startup, but wait until the right time and enable it in JavaScript instead.

Open the project's ios/YourAppName/AppDelegate.m file and replace [AppCenterReactNativeAnalytics registerWithInitiallyEnabled:true]; with [AppCenterReactNativeAnalytics registerWithInitiallyEnabled:false];.
Open the project's android/app/src/main/res/values/strings.xml file and replace <string name="appCenterAnalytics_whenToEnableAnalytics" moduleConfig="true" translatable="false">ALWAYS_SEND</string> with <string name="appCenterAnalytics_whenToEnableAnalytics" moduleConfig="true" translatable="false">ENABLE_IN_JS</string>.

This means that for any information to be sent to App Center (even basic session information), you must first enable App Center Analytics by adding the following line of code:

await Analytics.setEnabled(true);

Manage start session

By default, the session ID depends on the lifecycle of the application. If you want to control the start of a new session manually, follow the next steps:

Note

Pay attention that each call of Analytics.StartSession() API will generate a new session. If in manual session tracker mode this API will not be called then all sending logs will have a null session value.

Note

Pay attention that after a new application launch the session id will be regenerated.

To configure SDK for tracking session manually, you have to use the native Analytics enableManualSessionTracker APIs:

In iOS, call [MSACAnalytics enableManualSessionTracker]; before [AppCenterReactNative register]; in the app's didFinishLaunchingWithOptions delegate method in AppDelegate.m. Add @import AppCenterAnalytics if missing in that file.
In Android, call Analytics.enableManualSessionTracker(); before SoLoader.init in onCreate method in MainApplication.java. Add import com.microsoft.appcenter.analytics.Analytics if missing in that file.

Then you can use the startSession API in your React Native project:

Analytics.startSession();

Local storage size

By default, the SDK stores up to 10 MB of logs in the storage.

No internet access

When there isn't any network connectivity, the SDK saves up to 10 MB of logs in the local storage. Once the storage is full, the SDK will start discarding old logs to make room for the new logs. Once the device gets internet access back, the SDK will send logs in the batch of 50 or after every 6 seconds.

Batching event logs

The App Center SDK uploads logs in a batch of 50 and if the SDK doesn't have 50 logs to send, it will still send logs after 6 seconds. There can be a maximum of three batches sent in parallel.

Retry and back-off logic

App Center SDK supports back-off retries on recoverable network errors. Below is the retry logic:

3 tries maximum per request.
Each request has its own retry state machine.
All the transmission channels are disabled (until next app process) after one request exhausts all its retries.

Back-off logic

50% randomization, first retry between 5s and 10s, second retry between 2.5 and 5 minutes, last try between 10 and 20 minutes.
If network switches from off to on (or from wi-fi to mobile), retry states are reset and requests are retried immediately.

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