Analytics React Native Facebook App Events Plugin

Getting Started

1. From the Segment web app, click Catalog.
2. Search for “Facebook App Events” in the Catalog, select it, and choose which of your sources to connect the destination to.
3. In the destination settings, enter your Facebook App ID which can be retrieved from your Facebook Apps dashboard.
4. Add the Plugin to your project.

Adding the dependency

You need to install the @segment/analytics-react-native-plugin-facebook-app-events and the react-native-fbsdk-next dependency.

Using NPM:

npm install --save @segment/analytics-react-native-plugin-facebook-app-events react-native-fbsdk-next

Using Yarn:

yarn add @segment/analytics-react-native-plugin-facebook-app-events react-native-fbsdk-next

Run pod install after the installation to autolink the Facebook SDK.

Follow the instructions in Configure projects of React-Native-fbsdk-next to finish the setup of FBSDK.

See React Native FBSDK Next for more details of this dependency. The plugin automatically calls the Settings.initializeSDK(); method, so you do not need to explictly add that code to your app. Adding the method again may result in an error.

Using the Plugin in your App

Follow the instructions for adding plugins on the main Analytics client:

In your code where you initialize the analytics client call the .add(plugin) method with an FacebookAppEventsPlugin instance:

import { createClient } from '@segment/analytics-react-native';

import { FacebookAppEventsPlugin } from '@segment/analytics-react-native-plugin-facebook-app-events';

const segmentClient = createClient({
  writeKey: 'SEGMENT_KEY'
});

segmentClient.add({ plugin: new FacebookAppEventsPlugin() });

Screen

If you’re not familiar with the Segment Specs, take a look to understand what the Screen method does. An example call would look like:

const { screen } = useAnalytics();

screen('ScreenName', {
  productSlug: 'example-product-123',
});

This integration also supports using Segment screen events as track events. For example, if you had a screen event named Confirmation you could map the invocation of this to a Facebook app event as you would with Segment track events.

To use this functionality you must opt into it using the integration setting named Use Screen Events as Track Events. Once enabled, you should start seeing screen events populate in Facebook App Events. The screen name you provide will be surrounded with the words Viewed and Screen. So, if you have a screen event with the name property set to Welcome, it will show up in Facebook as an event called Viewed Welcome Screen.

Track

If you’re not familiar with the Segment Specs, take a look to understand what the Track method does. An example call would look like:

const { track } = useAnalytics();

track('View Product', {
  productId: 123,
  productName: 'Striped trousers',
});

When you call track Segment sends that event and it’s properties to Facebook. In the Facebook analytics interface you’ll be able to use the event properties to segment your data.

Facebook App Events doesn’t like events with periods in the name so if you send an event with periods in the name, Segment converts all periods to underscores. So if your event is friend.added, Segment sends that to Facebook as friend_added. Segment also truncates events that are longer than 40 characters long due to Facebook’s API constraints.

Facebook Parameters

Segment translates spec-matching properties revenue and currency to the appropriate Facebook parameters (valueToSum and FBSDKAppEventParameterNameCurrency), and also send events with revenue to Facebook’s purchase logging method (logPurchase).

If you don’t provide a currency explicitly, Segment sends USD. If any properties don’t match the below, Segment passes them on as they were sent.

Limited Data Use

In July 2020, Facebook released Limited Data Use feature to help businesses comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). This feature limits the way user data is stored and processed for all California residents who opt out of the sale of their data. You can send Limited Data Use data processing parameters to Facebook on each event so that Facebook can appropriately apply the user’s data choice. Segment recommends that you first familiarize yourself on this feature and the Data Processing Options Facebook accepts.

This destination supports the following parameters:

• Data Processing Options
• Data Processing Options Country
• Data Processing Options State

You can enable the feature using the Use Limited Data Use destination setting and control it using Data Processing Initialization Parameters.

Data Processing Destination Setting

You can change the Use Limited Data Use destination setting to enable or disable Limited Data Use. This must be enabled (set to “on”) if you want to send data processing parameters as part of the the Limited Data Use feature.

Data Processing Initialization Parameters

The Data Processing parameters you set are the Data Processing Options Segment uses when sending data to Facebook. By default, Segment uses the following Data Processing Parameters:

Facebook uses the context.ip to determine the geolocation of the event.

You can manually change the Data Processing parameters by adding settings to the integrations object.

Troubleshooting

Not seeing events?

Verify that the IDFA is working within your app, which involves adding the AdSupport and App Tracking Transparency frameworks.

Once you’ve added these, you will start to see the context.device.advertisingId populate and the context.device.adTrackingEnabled flag set to true unless the user has ad tracking limited or is using a mobile ad blocker.

Facebook requires that payloads include the following:

• context.device.id
• context.device.type
• context.os.version

For example:

{
  "anonymousId": "507f191e810c19729de860ea",
  "event": "Event Name",
​  "context": {
    "device": {
      "id": "B5372DB0-C21E-11E4-8DFC-AA07A5B093DB",
      "type": "ios"
    },
    "os": {
      "version": "8.1.3"
    }
  },​
  "messageId": "bbac-11e4-8dfc-aa07a53436b09b45567i8245237824",
  "type": "track",
  "userId": "97980cfea0067"
}

Missing custom events

Facebook will only accept custom events with alphanumeric names (you can include spaces, “-“ and “_”) that are between 2 and 40 characters in length. Otherwise, Facebook will reject the event payload with a 400 status.