Analytics

Installation and getting started with Analytics.

Installation

This module requires that the @react-native-firebase/app module is already setup and installed. To install the "app" module, view the Getting Started documentation.

# Install & setup the app module
yarn add @react-native-firebase/app

# Install the analytics module
yarn add @react-native-firebase/analytics

# If you're developing your app using iOS, run this command
cd ios/ && pod install

If you're using an older version of React Native without autolinking support, or wish to integrate into an existing project, you can follow the manual installation steps for iOS and Android.

What does it do

Analytics collects usage and behavior data for your app. Its two primary concerns are:

• Events: What is happening in your app, such as user actions, system events, or errors.
• User properties: Attributes you define to describe segments of your user base, such as language preference or geographic location.

Analytics automatically logs some events and user properties; you don't need to add any code to enable them. However, Analytics also allows you to log custom or predefined events within your app. How you can do this will be explained below.

Usage

Analytics offers a wealth of Predefined Events to track user behavior. Analytics also offers folks the ability to log Custom Events . If you're already familiar with Google Analytics, this method is equivalent to using the event command in gtag.js.

Custom Events

Below is an example showing how a custom event can be logged. Please be aware that primitive data types or arrays of primitive data types are logged in your Firebase Analytics console.

import react, { useEffect } from 'react';
import { View, Button } from 'react-native';
import analytics from '@react-native-firebase/analytics';

function App() {
  return (
    <View>
      <Button
        title="Add To Basket"
        onPress={async () =>
          await analytics().logEvent('basket', {
            id: 3745092,
            item: 'mens grey t-shirt',
            description: ['round neck', 'long sleeved'],
            size: 'L',
          })
        }
      />
    </View>
  );
}

Predefined Events

To help you get started, Analytics provides a number of event methods that are common among different types of apps, including retail and e-commerce, travel, and gaming apps. To learn more about these events and when to use them, browse the Events and properties articles in the Firebase Help Center.

Below is a sample of how to use one of the predefined methods the Analytics module provides for you:

import react, { useEffect } from 'react';
import { View, Button } from 'react-native';
import analytics from '@react-native-firebase/analytics';

function App() {
  return (
    <View>
      <Button
        title="Press me"
        // Logs in the firebase analytics console as "select_content" event
        // only accepts the two object properties which accept strings.
        onPress={async () =>
          await analytics().logSelectContent({
            content_type: 'clothing',
            item_id: 'abcd',
          })
        }
      />
    </View>
  );
}

For a full reference to predefined events and expected parameters, please check out the reference API.

Reserved Events

The Analytics package works out of the box, however a number of events are automatically reported to Firebase. These event names are called as 'Reserved Events'. Attempting to send any custom event using the logEvent method with any of the following event names will throw an error.

App instance id

Below is an example showing how to retrieve the app instance id of the application. This will return null on android if FirebaseAnalytics.ConsentType.ANALYTICS_STORAGE has been set to FirebaseAnalytics.ConsentStatus.DENIED and null on iOS if ConsentType.analyticsStorage has been set to ConsentStatus.denied.

import analytics from '@react-native-firebase/analytics';
// ...
const appInstanceId = await analytics().getAppInstanceId();

Disable Ad Id usage on iOS

Apple has a strict ban on the usage of Ad Ids ("IDFA") in Kids Category apps. They will not accept any app in the Kids category if the app accesses the IDFA iOS symbols.

Additionally, apps must implement Apples "App Tracking Transparency" (or "ATT") requirements if they access IDFA symbols. However, if an app does not use IDFA and otherwise handles data in an ATT-compatible way, it eliminates this ATT requirement.

If you need to avoid IDFA usage while still using analytics, then you need firebase-ios-sdk v7.11.0 or greater and to define the following variable in your Podfile:

$RNFirebaseAnalyticsWithoutAdIdSupport = true

During pod install, using that variable installs a new "Analytics With No Ad Ids" pod the firebase-ios-sdk team has created, and allows both the use of Firebase Analytics in Kids Category apps, and use of Firebase Analytics without needing the App Tracking Transparency handling (assuming no other parts of your app handle data in a way that requires ATT)

Note that for obvious reasons, configuring Firebase Analytics for use without IDFA is incompatible with AdMob

Device Identification

If you would like to enable Firebase Analytics to generate automatic audience metrics for iOS (as it does by default in Android), you must link additional iOS libraries, as documented by the Google Firebase team. Specifically you need to link in AdSupport.framework.

The way to do this using CocoaPods is to add this variable to your Podfile so @react-native-firebase/analytics will link it in for you:

$RNFirebaseAnalyticsEnableAdSupport = true

Note: this is setting will have no effect if you disabled Ad IDs as described above, since this setting is specifically linking in the AdSupport framework which requires the Ad IDs.

firebase.json

Disable Auto-Initialization

Analytics can be further configured to disable auto collection of Analytics data. This is useful for opt-in-first data flows, for example when dealing with GDPR compliance. This is possible by setting the below noted property on the firebase.json file at the root of your project directory.

// <project-root>/firebase.json
{
  "react-native": {
    "analytics_auto_collection_enabled": false
  }
}

To re-enable analytics (e.g. once you have the users consent), call the setAnalyticsCollectionEnabled method:

import { firebase } from '@react-native-firebase/analytics';
// ...
await firebase.analytics().setAnalyticsCollectionEnabled(true);

To update user's consent (e.g. once you have the users consent), call the setConsent method:

import { firebase } from '@react-native-firebase/analytics';
// ...
await firebase.analytics().setConsent({
  analytics_storage: true,
  ad_storage: true,
  ad_user_data: true,
  ad_personalization: true,
});

Disable screenview tracking

Analytics automatically tracks some information about screens in your application, such as the class name of the UIViewController or Activity that is currently in focus. Automatic screenview reporting can be turned off/on through google_analytics_automatic_screen_reporting_enabled property of firebase.json file.

// <project-root>/firebase.json
{
  "react-native": {
    "google_analytics_automatic_screen_reporting_enabled": false
  }
}

Seeing Events in Firebase Console's DebugView

iOS

When running on iOS in debug, events won't be logged by default. If you want to see events in DebugView in the Firebase Console when running debug builds, you'll need to first set a flag when launching in debug. This flag used to be variously called -FIRAnalyticsDebugEnabled and -FIRDebugEnabled, but please check the previous link.

To always set the flag when running debug builds of your app, you can edit your scheme in Xcode to always include the flag.

Android

When running on Android in debug, events won't be logged by default. If you want to see events in DebugView in the Firebase Console when running debug builds, you'll need to run the following command on the terminal adb shell setprop debug.firebase.analytics.app <package-name> - where <package-name> should be replaced with your app's package name.