Clickstream Flutter SDK

Introduction

Clickstream Flutter SDK can help you easily collect in-app click stream data from mobile devices to your AWS environments through the data pipeline provisioned by this solution.

The SDK is relies on the Clickstream Android SDK and Clickstream Swift SDK. Therefore, flutter SDK also supports automatically collect common user events and attributes (e.g., session start, first open). In addition, we've added easy-to-use APIs to simplify data collection in Flutter apps.

Platform Support

Android: 4.1 (API level 16) and later

iOS: 13 and later

Integrate the SDK

1. Include SDK

flutter pub add clickstream_analytics

After complete, rebuild your Flutter application.

flutter run

2. Initialize the SDK

Copy your configuration code from your clickstream solution web console, the configuration code should look like as follows. You can also manually add this code snippet and replace the values of appId and endpoint after you registered app to a data pipeline in the Clickstream Analytics solution console.

import 'package:clickstream_analytics/clickstream_analytics.dart';

final analytics = ClickstreamAnalytics();
analytics.init(
  appId: "your appId",
  endpoint: "https://example.com/collect"
);

Important

Your appId and endpoint are already set up in it.
We only need to initialize the SDK once after the application starts. It is recommended to do it in the main function of your App.
We can use bool result = await analytics.init() to get the boolean value of the initialization result.

3. Start using

Record event

Add the following code where you need to record event.

import 'package:clickstream_analytics/clickstream_analytics.dart';

final analytics = ClickstreamAnalytics();

// record event with attributes
analytics.record(name: 'button_click', attributes: {
  "event_category": "shoes",
  "currency": "CNY",
  "value": 279.9
});

// record event with name
analytics.record(name: "button_click");

Add global attribute

Add global attributes when initializing the SDK.

The following example code shows how to add traffic source fields as global attributes when initializing the SDK.

analytics.init({
  appId: "your appId",
  endpoint: "https://example.com/collect",
  globalAttributes: {
    Attr.TRAFFIC_SOURCE_SOURCE: "amazon",
    Attr.TRAFFIC_SOURCE_MEDIUM: "cpc",
    Attr.TRAFFIC_SOURCE_CAMPAIGN: "summer_promotion",
    Attr.TRAFFIC_SOURCE_CAMPAIGN_ID: "summer_promotion_01",
    Attr.TRAFFIC_SOURCE_TERM: "running_shoes",
    Attr.TRAFFIC_SOURCE_CONTENT: "banner_ad_1",
    Attr.TRAFFIC_SOURCE_CLID: "amazon_ad_123",
    Attr.TRAFFIC_SOURCE_CLID_PLATFORM: "amazon_ads",
    Attr.APP_INSTALL_CHANNEL: "amazon_store"
  }
});

Add global attributes after initializing the SDK.

analytics.addGlobalAttributes({
  Attr.TRAFFIC_SOURCE_MEDIUM: "Search engine",
  "level": 10
});

It is recommended to set global attributes when initializing the SDK, global attributes will be included in all events that occur after it is set.

Delete global attribute

analytics.deleteGlobalAttributes(["level"]);

// when user login success.
analytics.setUserId("userId");

// when user logout
analytics.setUserId(null);

Add user attribute

analytics.setUserAttributes({
  "userName":"carl",
  "userAge": 22
});

Current logged-in user's attributes will be cached in disk, so the next time app open you don't need to set all user attributes again, of course you can use the same API analytics.setUserAttributes() to update the current user's attribute when it changes.

Important

If your application is already published and most users have already logged in, please manually set the user attributes once when integrate the Clickstream SDK for the first time to ensure that subsequent events contains user attributes.

Record event with items

You can add the following code to log an event with an item, and you can add custom item attribute in the attributes Map. In addition to the preset attributes, an item can add up to 10 custom attributes.

var itemBook = ClickstreamItem(
    id: "123",
    name: "Nature",
    category: "book",
    price: 99,
    attributes: {
      "book_publisher": "Nature Research"
    }
);

analytics.record(
    name: "view_item", 
    attributes: {
        Attr.VALUE: 99,
        Attr.CURRENCY: "USD"
        "event_category": "recommended"
    }, 
    items: [itemBook]
);

For logging more attribute in an item, please refer to item attributes.

Important

Only pipelines from version 1.1+ can handle items with custom attribute.

item id is required attribute, if not set the item will be discarded.

Record Screen View events manually

By default, SDK will automatically track the preset _screen_view event when Android Activity triggers onResume or iOS ViewController triggers viewDidAppear.

You can also manually record screen view events whether automatic screen view tracking is enabled, add the following code to record a screen view event with two attributes.

screenName Required. Your screen's name.
screenUniqueId Optional. Set the id of your Widget. If you do not set, the SDK will set a default value based on the hashcode of the current Activity or ViewController.

analytics.recordScreenView(
  screenName: 'Main',
  screenUniqueId: '123adf',
  attributes: { ... }
);

Other configurations

In addition to the required appId and endpoint, you can configure other information to get more customized usage:

final analytics = ClickstreamAnalytics();
analytics.init(
  appId: "your appId",
  endpoint: "https://example.com/collect",
  isLogEvents: false,
  isCompressEvents: false,
  sendEventsInterval: 10000,
  isTrackScreenViewEvents: true,
  isTrackUserEngagementEvents: true,
  isTrackAppExceptionEvents: false,
  authCookie: "your auth cookie",
  sessionTimeoutDuration: 1800000,
  globalAttributes: {
    "_traffic_source_medium": "Search engine",
  }
);

Here is an explanation of each option:

Name	Required	Default value	Description
appId	true	--	the app id of your application in control plane
endpoint	true	--	the endpoint path you will upload the event to Clickstream ingestion server
isLogEvents	false	false	whether to print out event json in console for debugging events, Learn more
isCompressEvents	false	true	whether to compress event content by gzip when uploading events
sendEventsInterval	false	10000	event sending interval in milliseconds
isTrackScreenViewEvents	false	true	whether auto record screen view events in app
isTrackUserEngagementEvents	false	true	whether auto record user engagement events in app
isTrackAppExceptionEvents	false	false	whether auto track exception event in app
authCookie	false	--	your auth cookie for AWS application load balancer auth cookie
sessionTimeoutDuration	false	1800000	the duration for session timeout in milliseconds
globalAttributes	false	--	the global attributes when initializing the SDK

Configuration update

You can update the default configuration after initializing the SDK, below are the additional configuration options you can customize.

final analytics = ClickstreamAnalytics();
analytics.updateConfigure(
    appId: "your appId",
    endpoint: "https://example.com/collect",
    isLogEvents: true,
    isCompressEvents: false,
    isTrackScreenViewEvents: false
    isTrackUserEngagementEvents: false,
    isTrackAppExceptionEvents: false,
    authCookie: "test cookie");

Send event immediately

final analytics = ClickstreamAnalytics();
analytics.flushEvents();

Disable SDK

You can disable the SDK in the scenario you need. After disabling the SDK, the SDK will not handle the logging and sending of any events. Of course, you can enable the SDK when you need to continue logging events.

final analytics = ClickstreamAnalytics();

// disable SDK
analytics.disable();

// enable SDK
analytics.enable();

Debug events

You can follow the steps below to view the event raw JSON and debug your events.

Using analytics.updateConfigure() API and set the isLogEvents attributes with true in debug mode, for example:
```
// log the event in debug mode.
analytics.updateConfigure(isLogEvents: true);
```
Integrate the SDK and launch your app.
1. For Android application logs, we can see the logs directly in the terminal window. You can also use filters in the Android Studio Logcat window to view logs.
2. For iOS application logs, we should launch it via Xcode and open the log panel to see it.
Input EventRecorder to the filter, and you will see the JSON content of all events recorded by Clickstream Flutter SDK.

Data format definition

Data types

Clickstream Flutter SDK supports the following data types.

Data type	Range	Example
int	-9223372036854775808 ~ 9223372036854775807	12
double	5e-324 ~ 1.79e+308	3.14
bool	true, false	true
String	max 1024 characters	"Clickstream"

Naming rules

The event name and attribute name cannot start with a number, and only contain uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and underscores. In case of an invalid attribute name or user attribute name, it will discard the attribute and record error.
Do not use _ as prefix in an event name or attribute name, because the _ prefix is reserved for the solution.
The event name and attribute name are case-sensitive, so Add_to_cart and add_to_cart will be recognized as two different event names.

Event and attribute limitation

In order to improve the efficiency of querying and analysis, we apply limits to event data as follows:

Name	Suggestion	Hard limit	Strategy	Error code
Event name invalid	--	--	discard event, print log and record `_clickstream_error` event	1001
Length of event name	under 25 characters	50 characters	discard event, print log and record `_clickstream_error` event	1002
Length of event attribute name	under 25 characters	50 characters	discard the attribute, print log and record error in event attribute	2001
Attribute name invalid	--	--	discard the attribute, print log and record error in event attribute	2002
Length of event attribute value	under 100 characters	1024 characters	discard the attribute, print log and record error in event attribute	2003
Event attribute per event	under 50 attributes	500 event attributes	discard the attribute that exceed, print log and record error in event attribute	2004
User attribute number	under 25 attributes	100 user attributes	discard the attribute that exceed, print log and record `_clickstream_error` event	3001
Length of User attribute name	under 25 characters	50 characters	discard the attribute, print log and record `_clickstream_error` event	3002
User attribute name invalid	--	--	discard the attribute, print log and record `_clickstream_error` event	3003
Length of User attribute value	under 50 characters	256 characters	discard the attribute, print log and record `_clickstream_error` event	3004
Item number in one event	under 50 items	100 items	discard the item, print log and record error in event attribute	4001
Length of item attribute value	under 100 characters	256 characters	discard the item, print log and record error in event attribute	4002
Custom item attribute number in one item	under 10 custom attributes	10 custom attributes	discard the item, print log and record error in event attribute	4003
Length of item attribute name	under 25 characters	50 characters	discard the item, print log and record error in event attribute	4004
Item attribute name invalid	--	--	discard the item, print log and record error in event attribute	4005

Important

The character limits are the same for single-width character languages (e.g., English) and double-width character languages (e.g., Chinese).
The limit of event attribute per event include preset attributes.
If the attribute or user attribute with the same name is added more than twice, the latest value will apply.
All errors that exceed the limit will be recorded _error_code and _error_message these two attribute in the event attributes.

Preset events

For Android: Refer to Android SDK preset events

For iOS: Refer to Swift SDK preset events

Event attributes

For Android: Refer to Android SDK event attributes

For iOS: Refer to Swift SDK event attributes

Change log

GitHub change log

Native SDK version dependencies

Flutter SDK Version	Android SDK Version	Swift SDK Version
0.4.2	0.13.0	0.12.3
0.3.0 ~ 0.4.1	0.12.0	0.11.0
0.2.0	0.10.0	0.9.1
0.1.0	0.9.0	0.8.0

Reference link

Source code

Project issue

Clickstream Flutter SDK

Introduction

Platform Support

Integrate the SDK

1. Include SDK

2. Initialize the SDK

3. Start using

Record event

Add global attribute

Delete global attribute

Login and logout

Add user attribute

Record event with items

Record Screen View events manually

Other configurations

Configuration update

Send event immediately

Disable SDK

Debug events

Data format definition

Data types

Naming rules

Event and attribute limitation

Preset events

Event attributes

Change log

Reference link