Analytics-Flutter
The Analytics-Flutter library is currently in public beta and is governed by Segment’s First Access and Beta Preview Terms. For more information, see the Analytics-Flutter GitHub repository.
Updated package for pilot users
If you’ve been using Analytics-Flutter since the pilot phase, see Upgrading from pilot to use the updated version of Analytics-Flutter.
Analytics-Flutter lets you add Segment analytics to your Flutter app.
Supported platforms
Analytics-Flutter supports these platforms:
- Android
- iOS
- MacOS
- Web
Some destination plugins may not support all platform functionality. Refer to individual platform SDKs for more details.
Getting started
To install Analytics-Flutter:
-
Add the core package as a dependency.
flutter pub add segment_analytics
-
(Optional) Add any plugin that you need.
flutter pub add segment_analytics_plugin_firebase
-
Import the library in your Dart code.
import 'package:segment_analytics/client.dart';
-
Add permissions to
AndroidManifest.xml
. Add the line below between the `` tags.<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE" />
Setting up the client
The Flutter SDK package exposes a method called createClient
which you can use to create the Segment Analytics client. This central client manages all of the tracking events. Segment recommends that you add this as a property on your main app’s state class.
const writeKey = 'SEGMENT_API_KEY';
final analytics = createClient(Configuration(writeKey));
You must pass the writeKey
.
These are the options you can apply to configure the client:
Option Name | Default | Description |
---|---|---|
writeKey (required) |
’’ | Your Segment API key. |
debug |
false | When this is set to false , it won’t generate any info logs. |
collectDeviceId |
false | Set this to true to automatically collect the device ID from the DRM API on Android devices. |
flushPolicies |
count=30, time=20s | List of flush policies controlling when to send batches of events to the plugins |
apiHost |
api.segment.io/v1 | Used to specify the regional Segment event endpoint. |
cdnHost |
cdn-settings.segment.com/v1 | Used to specify the regional Segment settings endpoint. |
errorHandler |
null | Custom error handler. By default, this logs errors to the standard flutter logger. |
trackApplicationLifecycleEvents |
false | Set this to true to enable automatic tracking for app lifecycle events which include, application installed, opened, updated, backgrounded. |
trackDeeplinks |
false | Set this to true to enable automatic tracking for when the user opens the app through a deep link. Note: When you send this flag, the SDK plugin_appsflyer ignores onAppOpenAttribution. |
autoAddSegmentDestination |
true | Set this to false to skip adding the SegmentDestination plugin. |
defaultIntegrationSettings |
null | Plugin settings that are used if the request to get the settings from Segment fails. |
maxBatchSize |
true | The maximum number of events you can send to the API at once is 100. |
appStateStream |
null | Set this to override the stream of application foreground or background events. |
requestFactory |
true | Set this to override the factory to generate HTTP requests. Type: RequestFactory. |
Upgrading from pilot
If you’ve been using Analytics-Flutter since the pilot phase, follow these steps to use the upgraded version of Analytics-Flutter as Segment renamed the package of the library from analytics
to segment_analytics
.
-
Remove the
analytics
package and usesegment_analytics
in yourpubspec.yaml
file.- analytics: - git: - url: https://github.com/segmentio/analytics_flutter - ref: main - path: packages/core + segment_analytics: ^1.0.1
-
Change the imports from
package:analytics
topackage:segment_analytics
in your dart files.- import 'package:analytics/client.dart'; + import 'package:segment_analytics/client.dart';
Tracking methods
Once you’ve installed the Analytics-Flutter library, you can start collecting data through Segment’s tracking methods:
Track
The Track method is how you record any actions your users perform, along with any properties that describe the action.
Future track(String event: string, {Map<String, dynamic>? properties});
analytics.track("View Product", properties: {
"productId": 123,
"productName": "Striped trousers"
});
Screen
The Screen method lets you record whenever a user sees a screen in your mobile app, along with any properties about the screen.
Future screen(String name: string, {Map<String, dynamic>? properties});
analytics.screen("ScreenName", properties: {
"productSlug": "example-product-123",
});
See how to set up automatic screen tracking.
Identify
The Identify method lets you tie a user to their actions and record traits about them. This includes a unique user ID and any optional traits you know about them like their email, name, address. The traits option can include any information you might want to tie to the user, but when using any of the reserved user traits, you should make sure to only use them for their intended meaning. All reserved traits are strongly typed by the UserTraits
class. When you use traits not listed as a reserved user trait, these go under the custom
property.
Future identify({String? userId, UserTraits? userTraits});
analytics.identify(userId: "testUserId", userTraits: UserTraits(
username: "MisterWhiskers",
email: "hello@test.com",
custom: {
"plan": "premium"
}
);
Group
The Group method is how you associate an individual user with a group — whether it’s a company, organization, account, project, team. This includes a unique group ID and any optional group traits you know about them like the company name, industry, the number of employees. The traits option can include any information you might want to tie to the group, but when using any of the reserved group traits, you should make sure to only use them for their intended meaning. All reserved traits are strongly typed by the GroupTraits
class. When you use traits not listed as a reserved user trait, these go under the custom
property.
Future group(String groupId, {GroupTraits? groupTraits});
analytics.group("some-company", groupTraits: GroupTraits(
name: 'Segment',
custom: {
"region": "UK"
}
);
Utility methods
The Analytics-Flutter utility methods help you work with plugins from the analytics timeline. They include:
Alias
The Alias method is used to merge two user identities, effectively connecting two sets of user data as one. This is an advanced method, but it’s required to manage user identities successfully in some of Segment’s destinations.
Future alias(String newUserId);
analytics.alias("user-123");
Reset
The Reset method clears the internal state of the library for the current user and group. This is useful for apps where users can log in and out with different identities over time.
Note: Each time you call reset, a new AnonymousId generates automatically.
void reset();
analytics.reset();
Flush
By default, the analytics send to the API after 30 seconds or when 20 items accumulate, whichever happens first, and whenever the app resumes if the user has closed the app with some events unsent. You can modify these values by the flushAt
and flushInterval
config options. You can also trigger a flush event manually.
Future flush();
analytics.flush();
Advanced cleanup
In case you need to reinitialize the client, because you called createClient
more than once for the same client in your application lifecycle, use this method on the old client to clear any subscriptions and timers first.
var analytics = createClient(Configuration(writeKey));
analytics.cleanup();
analytics = createClient(Configuration(writeKey));
If you don’t do this, the old client instance still exists and retains the timers, which makes all of your events fire twice.
Automatic screen tracking
Automatic screen tracking enables you to track navigation globally, as sending a screen()
event with each navigation action gets tiresome quickly. To set up automatic screen tracking, you need to add the analytics navigator observer to your app’s navigator observers. For example, if you’re using the MaterialApp
class, add the following:
return MaterialApp(navigatorObservers: [
ScreenObserver()
]);
Plugin architecture
Segment’s plugin architecture enables you to modify and augment how the analytics client works. You have complete control over how the events process before being uploaded to the Segment API. From modifying event payloads to changing analytics functionality, plugins help to speed up the process of getting things done.
In order to customize what happens after an event is created, you can create and place various plugins along the processing pipeline that an event goes through. This pipeline is referred to as a timeline.
As plugins run through a timeline, they execute in order of insertion based on their entry types. Segment has these 5 entry types:
Plugin Type | Description |
---|---|
before |
Executes before event processing begins. |
enrichment |
Executes as the first level of event processing. |
destination |
Executes as events begin to pass off to destinations. |
after |
Executes after all event processing completes. This can be used to perform cleanup operations. |
utility |
Executes only with manual calls such as Logging. |
Plugins can have their own native code (for example, the iOS-only analytics_plugin_idfa
) or wrap an underlying library (such as analytics_plugin_firebase
which uses firebase_core
and firebase_analytics
under the hood).
Destination plugins
Segment is included as a DestinationPlugin
out of the box. You can add as many destination plugins as you like and upload events and data to them.
You can pass autoAddSegmentDestination = false
in the options when setting up your client to prevent the SegmentDestination
plugin from being added automatically.
Adding Plugins
You can add a plugin at any time through the Add method.
import 'package:segment_analytics/client.dart';
import 'package:segment_analytics/event.dart';
import 'package:segment_analytics/state.dart';
import 'package:segment_analytics_plugin_advertising_id/plugin_advertising_id.dart';
import 'package:segment_analytics_plugin_idfa/plugin_idfa.dart';
import 'package:segment_analytics_plugin_firebase/plugin_firebase.dart'
show FirebaseDestination;
const writeKey = 'SEGMENT_API_KEY';
class _MyAppState extends State<MyApp> {
final analytics = createClient(Configuration(writeKey));
@override
void initState() {
super.initState();
initPlatformState();
analytics
.addPlugin(FirebaseDestination(DefaultFirebaseOptions.currentPlatform));
analytics.addPlugin(PluginAdvertisingId());
analytics.addPlugin(PluginIdfa());
}
}
Writing your own plugins
Plugins are implemented by extending one of the provided plugin classes. The available plugin classes are:
Plugin
EventPlugin
DestinationPlugin
UtilityPlugin
PlatformPlugin
Any plugin must be an extension of one of these classes.
You can then customize the functionality by overriding different methods on the base class. For example, here is a Logger
plugin:
import 'dart:convert';
import 'package:segment_analytics/analytics.dart';
import 'package:segment_analytics/event.dart';
import 'package:segment_analytics/plugin.dart';
import 'package:segment_analytics/logger.dart';
class EventLogger extends DestinationPlugin {
var logKind = LogFilterKind.debug;
EventLogger() : super("event_logger");
@override
void configure(Analytics analytics) {
pAnalytics = analytics;
}
@override
Future<RawEvent?>? execute(RawEvent event) async {
log("${event.type.toString().toUpperCase()} event${event is TrackEvent ? " (${event.event})" : ''} saved: \n${jsonEncode(event.toJson())}",
kind: logKind);
return event;
}
}
As it overrides the execute
method, this Logger
calls log
for every event going through the timeline.
Supported plugins
You can use these plugins to meet your tracking needs:
Plugin | Package |
---|---|
Adjust | analytics_plugin_adjust |
AppsFlyer | analytics_plugin_appsflyer |
Firebase | analytics_plugin_firebase |
IDFA | analytics_plugin_idfa |
Android Advertising ID | analytics_plugin_advertising-id |
Controlling upload with flush policies
You can use FlushPolicies
to more granularly control when events upload.
A flush policy defines the strategy for deciding when to flush. This can be on an interval, on a certain time of day, after receiving a certain number of events, or even after receiving a particular event. This gives you more flexibility on when to send events to Segment.
To make use of flush policies, you can set them in the configuration of the client:
import 'package:segment_analytics/flush_policies/count_flush_policy.dart';
import 'package:segment_analytics/flush_policies/timer_flush_policy.dart';
final analytics = createClient(Configuration(/*...*/, flushPolicies: [
CountFlushPolicy(10),
TimerFlushPolicy(100000)
]));
You can set several policies at a time. Whenever any policy decides it’s time for a flush, it triggers an upload of the events. The rest are reset so that their logic restarts after every flush.
This means only the first policy to reach shouldFlush
gets to trigger a flush at a time. In the example above, when either the event count gets to 5 or the timer reaches 500ms, whatever comes first triggers a flush.
Segment has several standard FlushPolicies:
CountFlushPolicy
triggers whenever a certain number of events is reached.TimerFlushPolicy
triggers on an interval of milliseconds.StartupFlushPolicy
triggers on client startup only.
Adding or removing policies
One of the main advantanges of FlushPolicies
is that you can add and remove policies whenever you want. This is powerful when you want to reduce or increase the amount of flushes.
For example, you might want to disable flushes if you detect the user has no network:
if (isConnected) {
analytics.addFlushPolicy(policiesIfNetworkIsUp);
} else {
analytics.removeFlushPolicy(policiesIfNetworkIsUp)
}
Creating your own flush policies
You can create a custom FlushPolicy
for your application needs by implementing the FlushPolicy
interface. You can also extend the FlushPolicyBase
class that already creates and handles the shouldFlush
value reset.
A FlushPolicy
only needs to implement one method:
onEvent(RawEvent event)
: Gets called on every event tracked by your client.
A FlushPolicy
can optionally implement:
reset()
: Calls after a flush is triggered either by your policy, by another policy, or manually.start()
: Executes when the flush policy is enabled and added to the client. This is a good place to start background operations, make async calls, and configure things before execution.
The FlushPolicy
should have a shouldFlush
boolean value. When this is set to true
, the client attempts to upload events. Each policy should reset this value to false
according to its own logic, although it’s pretty common to do it inside the reset
method.
import 'package:segment_analytics/event.dart';
import 'package:segment_analytics/flush_policies/flush_policy.dart';
class FlushOnScreenEventsPolicy extends FlushPolicy {
@override
onEvent(RawEvent event) {
// Only flush when a screen even happens
if (event is ScreenEvent) {
this.shouldFlush = true;
}
}
@override
reset() {
// Superclass will reset the shouldFlush value so that the next screen event triggers a flush again
// But you can also reset the value whenever, say another event comes in or after a timeout
super.reset();
}
}
Custom logging
By default, any logging is done through the standard Flutter logging mechanism. To customize logging, you can build your own logger, which must implement the LogTarget
mixin. For example:
import 'package:segment_analytics/logger.dart';
void customDebugLog(String msg) {
// ...
}
void customWarningLog(String msg) {
// ...
}
void customErrorLog(String msg) {
// ...
}
class CustomLogger with LogTarget {
@override
void parseLog(LogMessage log) {
switch (log.kind) {
case LogFilterKind.debug:
customDebugLog("Segment: ${log.message}");
break;
case LogFilterKind.warning:
customWarningLog("Segment: ${log.message}");
break;
case LogFilterKind.error:
customErrorLog("Segment: ${log.message}");
break;
}
}
}
// Set the default logger to use the CustomLogger
LogFactory.logger = CustomLogger();
Handling errors
You can handle analytics client errors through the errorHandler
option.
The error handler configuration receives a function which gets called whenever an error happens on the analytics client. It receives an Exception that extends one of the errors from errors.dart.
You can use this error handling to trigger different behaviors in the client when a problem occurs. For example, if the client gets rate limited, you could use the error handler to swap flush policies to be less aggressive.
import 'package:segment_analytics/errors.dart';
//...
final flushPolicies = [CountFlushPolicy(5), TimerFlushPolicy(500)];
void errorHandler(Exception error) {
if (error is NetworkServerLimited) {
// Remove all flush policies
analytics.removeFlushPolicy(analytics.getFlushPolicies());
// Add less persistent flush policies
analytics.addFlushPolicy([
CountFlushPolicy(100),
TimerFlushPolicy(5000)
]);
}
}
final analytics = createClient(Configuration(writeKey),
errorHandler: errorHandler,
flushPolicies: flushPolicies);
Reporting errors from plugins
Plugins can also report errors to the handler by using the .error
function of the analytics client. Segment recommends you to use the PluginError
for consistency, and to attach the innerError
with the actual exception that was hit.
import 'package:segment_analytics/errors.dart';
//...
try {
distinctId = await mixpanel.getDistinctId();
} catch (e) {
analytics.error(
PluginError('Error: Mixpanel error calling getDistinctId', e)
);
}
Platfom specific info
Web
analytics_flutter
on web checks for Analytics.JS
userInfo cookies/localStorage and reuses the anonymousId
data.
LocalStorage recovery only works when running in the same domain/subdomain.
Example app
See the example app to check a full test app of how to integrate Analytics-Flutter into your own Flutter app.
This page was last modified: 28 Feb 2024
Need support?
Questions? Problems? Need more info? Contact Segment Support for assistance!