Firebase Analytics events from iOS not showing up

Question

I am testing the new Google-powered Firebase, and have implemented remote notifications and crash reporting. I am, however, having massive problems with getting Analytics to work.

I track events with FIRAnalytics.logEventWithName(...) and save user pproperties with FIRAnalytics.setUserPropertyString(...). However, no matter what I do, no data shows up in the Firebase Analytics Console.

Well, I do receive some events, but those are not sent by me (like first_open and session_start). Also, this data seems to drop in after a very long time.

Furthermore, when I track events and save user data, I receive the following:

Upload task scheduled to be executed in approx. (s): 3102.294599890709

This seems really strange - Firebase waiting almost an hour before trying to send the next batch of data must be a bug, or is it configurable? When I waited that extremely long delay out, data was sent...but does not show up.

Answer 1

Firebase events are batched together and uploaded once every hour in order to prevent excessive battery drain on the devices. On iOS when you background the app before the 1h upload target the events will be dispatched at this time in the background.

You can enable debug logging for iOS (https://firebase.google.com/docs/analytics/ios/events#view_events_in_the_xcode_debug_console) to see when events are uploaded in debug console.

Once the events are uploaded there is delay at about 3h before the data will show up in the Firebase Analytics dashboard. Also the default day range excludes "today" so you only see events from yesterday. You can switch the date picker to include Today if you like to see the latest events.

The main reason to delay/batch data uploading is to save battery. Each time the network is used the device mobile network modem is put in hi power mode and stay in this mode for a while. If network is used regularly it has sever impact on the battery life. By batching the uploads together and delaying the upload the impact on the battery is significantly reduced.

Answer 2

In Swift it should be like:

FIRAnalytics.logEvent(withName: "SignUp", parameters: ["user_id": userid, "user_name": username])

To view this event in Firebase:

1. Go to Firebase console → Analytics tab
2. Click on DebugView tab; your Events are shown there

To view this event in Xcode:

1. In Xcode, select Product → Scheme → EditScheme
2. Select Run from left Menu
3. Select Arguments tab
4. In the Arguments Passed on Launch, add -FIRAnalyticsDebugEnabled

One dash only!!

Note that -FIRAnalyticsDebugEnabled has only ONE dash in front of it.

Answer 3

If you are not receiving events in console, it may be because you are not following naming convention, as I experienced if there is a space in event name it will never show up in the console like following:

mFirebaseAnalytics.logEvent("Add Camera", bundle);

But when you remove the space like following:

mFirebaseAnalytics.logEvent("Add_Camera", bundle);

Now you will see events in console, after approximately 3 hours. Application will dispatch the data to console in following cases:

1- Data is more than an hours old
2- App goes into the background

You can watch this tutorial for more information: Getting Started with Firebase Analytics on iOS: Events - Firecasts

Answer 4

Another thing to check is making sure your logging entries in the Arguments Passed on Launch are correct. They should start with a - e.g

-FIRAnalyticsDebugEnabled

and not

FIRAnalyticsDebugEnabled

I wasted an hour the other day wondering why nothing gets logged.

Answer 5

React-Native App (IOS/Android)

I had the same problem, debugView wasn't working, and streamView glitches a few times, the best way ive found to test my events was to logEvents with my createPageEvent() and then

the important thing is to put the app into background after logging the events, they will show up almost in realtime on firebase events or in streamView (check this article to see when events are sent to firebase)

events are only sent after 1 hour since they have been logged or immediately if you put your app in background.

import firebase, { RNFirebase } from 'react-native-firebase';

export default class AnalyticsService  {

    static async initialize() {
        firebase.analytics().setAnalyticsCollectionEnabled(true);
    }

    static async createPageEvent(screen: string) {
        firebase.analytics().setCurrentScreen(screen)
        firebase.analytics().logEvent(`open_${screen}`)
    }

}

the result is this in streamView almost realtime ->

Now you can start building funnels and stuff

Answer 6

first_open, session_start are listed by Firebase as Automatically collected events.

I can not help you with the extreme upload task delay you encounter on your custom events.. but Firebase Analytics is less than a week old and it may be just a bug on their side.

I found this StackOverflow question which mention the same debug lines but related to Google App Measurement or old Google Mobile Analytics SDK.

Also, be aware that Firebase Console won't show events in real-time (source):

You can view aggregrated statistics about your events in the Firebase console dashboards. These dashboards update periodically throughout the day. For immediate testing, use the logcat output as described in the previous section.

Answer 7

Just a simple note here: according to this little video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pYdTgSkW5E after playing with your simulator you must press the home button on the Xcode, otherwise the data will not be sent to the server.

Answer 8

The most common problem most of the people are facing is the firebase is not logging events even though everything is working perfectly fine This is what i found in there docs

If you need to deactivate Analytics collection permanently in a version of your app, set FIREBASE_ANALYTICS_COLLECTION_DEACTIVATED to YES in your app's Info.plist file. Setting FIREBASE_ANALYTICS_COLLECTION_DEACTIVATED to YES takes priority over any values for FIREBASE_ANALYTICS_COLLECTION_ENABLED in your app's Info.plist as well as any values set with setAnalyticsCollectionEnabled.

To re-enable collection, remove FIREBASE_ANALYTICS_COLLECTION_DEACTIVATED from your Info.plist. Setting FIREBASE_ANALYTICS_COLLECTION_DEACTIVATED to NO has no effect and results in the same behavior as not having FIREBASE_ANALYTICS_COLLECTION_DEACTIVATED set in your Info.plist file.

So you have to remove FIREBASE_ANALYTICS_COLLECTION_DEACTIVATED from your google-servicesinfo.plist file to make analytics work

Answer 9

Make sure your device is not set to battery save mode. In this mode events may be accumulated and sent only once in a while, even if you run firebase in debug mode as explained by others.

Answer 10

It takes too much time to update events in Firebase. Probably it is done once a day. See iOS or Android logging of Firebase events.

You can enable verbose logging to monitor logging of events by the SDK to help verify that events are being logged properly. This includes both automatically and manually logged events.

You can enable verbose logging as follows:

1. In Xcode, select Product > Scheme > Edit scheme...
2. Select Run from the left menu.
3. Select the Arguments tab.
4. In the Arguments Passed On Launch section, add -FIRAnalyticsDebugEnabled.

The next time you run your app, your events will display in the Xcode debug console, helping you immediately verify that events are being sent.