The AWS Mobile SDK for Xamarin is now included in the AWS SDK for .NET. This guide references the archived version of the Mobile SDK for Xamarin.

Amazon Mobile Analytics

Amazon Mobile Analytics is a service for collecting, visualizing, understanding and extracting app usage data at scale. Mobile Analytics easily captures both standard device data and custom events and automatically calculates reports on your behalf. In addition to the aggregated reports listed below, you can also setup your data to be exported to Redshift and S3 automatically for further analysis.

Using Amazon Mobile Analytics, you can track customer behaviors, aggregate metrics, generate data visualizations, and identify meaningful patterns.

Key Concepts

Report Types

Out of the box, Mobile Analytics provides the following reports in the Mobile Analytics Console:

These reports are provided via six reporting tabs in the console:

To learn more about Mobile Analytics reports and working in the Mobile Analytics console, see the Mobile Analytics Console Reports Overview in the Mobile Analytics Developer Guide.

Project Setup

Prerequisites

To use Mobile Analytics in your application, you’ll need to add the SDK to your project. To do so, follow the instructions in Setting Up the AWS Mobile SDK for .NET and Xamarin.

Configure Mobile Analytics Settings

Mobile Analytics defines some settings that can be configured in the awsconfig.xml file:

var config = new MobileAnalyticsManagerConfig();
config.AllowUseDataNetwork = true;
config.DBWarningThreshold = 0.9f;
config.MaxDBSize = 5242880;
config.MaxRequestSize = 102400;
config.SessionTimeout = 5;

The settings shown above are the default values for each configuration item.

Integrating Mobile Analytics with Your Application

The sections below explain how to integrate Mobile Analytics with your app.

Create an App in the Mobile Analytics Console

Go to the Amazon Mobile Analytics console and create an app. Note the appId value, as you’ll need it later. When you are creating an app in the Mobile Analytics Console you will need to specify your identity pool ID. For instructions on creating an identity pool, see Setting Up the AWS Mobile SDK for .NET and Xamarin.

To learn more about working in the Mobile Analytics Console, see the Mobile Analytics Console Reports Overview in the Mobile Analytics Developer Guide.

Create a MobileAnalyticsManager Client

To initialize your MobileAnalyticsManager, call GetOrCreateInstance on your MobileAnalyticsManager, passing in your AWS credentials, your region, your Mobile Analytics application ID, and your optional config object:

// Initialize the MobileAnalyticsManager
analyticsManager = MobileAnalyticsManager.GetOrCreateInstance(
  cognitoCredentials,
  RegionEndpoint.USEast1,
  APP_ID,
  config
);

The APP_ID is generated for you during the app creation wizard. Both of these values must match those in the Mobile Analytics Console. The APP_ID is used to group your data in the Mobile Analytics console. To find your app ID after creating the app in the Mobile Analytics console, browse to the Mobile Analytics Console, click the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. This will display the App Management page which lists all registered apps and their app IDs.

Record Monetization Events

The AWS Mobile SDK for .NET and Xamarin provides the MonetizationEvent class, which enables you generate monetization events to track purchases made within mobile applications. The following code snippet shows how to create a monetization event:

// Create the monetization event object
MonetizationEvent monetizationEvent = new MonetizationEvent();

// Set the details of the monetization event
monetizationEvent.Quantity = 3.0;
monetizationEvent.ItemPrice = 1.99;
monetizationEvent.ProductId = "ProductId123";
monetizationEvent.ItemPriceFormatted = "$1.99";
monetizationEvent.Store = "Your-App-Store";
monetizationEvent.TransactionId = "TransactionId123";
monetizationEvent.Currency = "USD";

// Record the monetiziation event
analyticsManager.RecordEvent(monetizationEvent);

Record Custom Events

Mobile Analytics allows you to define custom events. Custom events are defined entirely by you; they help you track user actions specific to your app or game. For more information about Custom events, see Custom-Events.

For this example, we’ll say that our app is a game, and that we want to record an event when a user completes a level. Create a “LevelComplete” event by creating a new AmazonMobileAnalyticsEvent instance:

CustomEvent customEvent = new CustomEvent("LevelComplete");

// Add attributes
customEvent.AddAttribute("LevelName","Level1");
customEvent.AddAttribute("CharacterClass","Warrior");
customEvent.AddAttribute("Successful","True");

// Add metrics
customEvent.AddMetric("Score",12345);
customEvent.AddMetric("TimeInLevel",64);

// Record the event
analyticsManager.RecordEvent(customEvent);

Recording Sessions

Xamarin iOS

When the application loses focus you can pause the session. For iOS apps, in the AppDelegate.cs file, override DidEnterBackground and WillEnterForeground to call MobileAnalyticsManager.PauseSesion and MobileAnalyticsManager.ResumeSession as shown in the following snippet:

public override void DidEnterBackground(UIApplication application)
{
  // ...
  _manager.PauseSesson();
  // ...
}

public override void WillEnterForeground(UIApplication application)
{
  // ...
  _manager.ResumeSession();
  // ...
}

Xamarin Android

For Android apps call MobileAnalyticsManager.PauseSesion in the OnPause() method and MobileAnalyticsManager.ResumeSession in the OnResume() method as shown in the following code snippet:

protected override void OnResume()
{
  _manager.ResumeSession();
  base.OnResume();
}

protected override void OnPause()
{
  _manager.PauseSession();
  base.OnPause();
}

By default, if the user switches focus away from the app for less than 5 seconds, and switches back to the app the session will be resumed. If the user switches focus away from the app for 5 seconds or longer, a new session will be created. This setting is configurable in the aws_mobile_analytics.json configuration file by setting the “SESSION_DELTA” property to the number of seconds to wait before creating a new session.