Another interesting feature that firebase offers is the Firebase Analytics. Free, simple and unlimited. Sounds like a scam? Luckily google is not joking. Analytics integrates across Firebase features and provides you with unlimited reporting for up to 500 distinct events that you can define using the Firebase SDK.

Firebase Analytics reports help you understand clearly how your users behave, which enables you to make informed decisions regarding app marketing and performance optimizations. Firebase Analytics helps you understand how people use your app.

The Firebase SDK automatically captures a number of events and user properties and also allows you to define your own custom events to measure the things that uniquely matter to your business. Once the data is captured, it’s available in a dashboard through the Firebase console. This dashboard provides detailed insights about your data — from summary data such as active users and demographics, to more detailed data such as identifying your most purchased items.

Firebase Analytics also integrates with a number of other Firebase features. For example, it automatically logs events that correspond to your Firebase Notifications and provides reporting on the impact of each campaign.
Here are the events and user properties that Firebase Analytics offers without adding any additional code to you project.

Automatically Collected Events

Automatically collected events are triggered by basic interactions with your app. As long as you use the Firebase SDK, you don’t need to write any additional code to collect these events. Below are list of event collected automatically.

Automatically Collected User Properties

Firebase automatically collects user properties too such as App version, Device model, Gender, Age, Interests, OS version, New/Established. This information can be seen the dashboard directly without writing any additional code.

Integrating Firebase Analytics

Now we’ll create a simple app which collects user chosen food on firebase analytics dashboard. All we do is collect user id along with the food he is choosing.

1. First thing you need to do is go to https://firebase.google.com/ and make an account to gain access to their console. After you gain access to the console you can start by creating your first project.

2. Give the package name of your project (mine is info.androidhive.firebase) in which you are going to integrate the Firebase. Here the google-services.json file will be downloaded when you press add app button.

3. Create a new project in Android Studio from File ⇒ New Project. While filling the project details, use the same package name which you gave in firebase console. In my case I am using same info.androidhive.firebase.

4. Open AndroidManifest.xml and add the INTERNET permission as we need to make network calls.

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />

5. Paste the google-services.json file to your project’s app folder. This step is very important as your project won’t build without this file.

6. Now open the build.gradle located in project’s home directory and add firebase dependency.

dependencies {
        classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:2.1.2'
        classpath 'com.google.gms:google-services:3.0.0'

        // NOTE: Do not place your application dependencies here; they belong
        // in the individual module build.gradle files
    }

7. Open app/build.gradle and add firebase core dependency. At the very bottom of the file, add apply plugin: ‘com.google.gms.google-services’

dependencies {
    compile 'com.google.firebase:firebase-core:9.0.2'
}

apply plugin: 'com.google.gms.google-services'

8. Add new class and name it Food.java. This will be our plain mega simple POJO just for the sake of testing.

package com.androidhive.info.firabaseanalytisc;

public class Food {

    private int id;
    private String name;

    public int getId() {
        return id;
    }

    public void setId(int id) {
        this.id = id;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }
}

9. Open MainActivity.java and add the following.

package com.androidhive.info.firabaseanalytisc;

import android.support.v7.app.AppCompatActivity;
import android.os.Bundle;

import com.google.firebase.analytics.FirebaseAnalytics;

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {

    private FirebaseAnalytics firebaseAnalytics;
    String[] foods;

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

        foods = new String[]{"Apple", "Banana", "Grape", "Mango", "Orange"};

        // Obtain the Firebase Analytics instance.
        firebaseAnalytics = FirebaseAnalytics.getInstance(this);

        Food food = new Food();
        food.setId(1);
        // choose random food name from the list
        food.setName(foods[randomIndex()]);

        Bundle bundle = new Bundle();
        bundle.putInt(FirebaseAnalytics.Param.ITEM_ID, food.getId());
        bundle.putString(FirebaseAnalytics.Param.ITEM_NAME, food.getName());

        //Logs an app event.
        firebaseAnalytics.logEvent(FirebaseAnalytics.Event.SELECT_CONTENT, bundle);

        //Sets whether analytics collection is enabled for this app on this device.
        firebaseAnalytics.setAnalyticsCollectionEnabled(true);

        //Sets the minimum engagement time required before starting a session. The default value is 10000 (10 seconds). Let's make it 20 seconds just for the fun
        firebaseAnalytics.setMinimumSessionDuration(20000);

        //Sets the duration of inactivity that terminates the current session. The default value is 1800000 (30 minutes).
        firebaseAnalytics.setSessionTimeoutDuration(500);

        //Sets the user ID property.
        firebaseAnalytics.setUserId(String.valueOf(food.getId()));

        //Sets a user property to a given value.
        firebaseAnalytics.setUserProperty("Food", food.getName());
    }

    private int randomIndex() {
        int min = 0;
        int max = foods.length - 1;
        Random rand = new Random();
        return min + rand.nextInt((max - min) + 1);
    }
}

And here is the explanation of the code in detail.

firebaseAnalytics = FirebaseAnalytics.getInstance(this);

This is the part where you simply call the instance of the FirebaseAnalytics. After we get the instance we can set up few events.

Bundle bundle = new Bundle();
bundle.putInt(FirebaseAnalytics.Param.ITEM_ID, food.getId());
bundle.putString(FirebaseAnalytics.Param.ITEM_NAME, food.getName());
firebaseAnalytics.logEvent(FirebaseAnalytics.Event.SELECT_CONTENT, bundle);

Here we create a bundle and pass it to the logEvent. We can also set whether analytics collection is enabled for this app on this device.

firebaseAnalytics.setAnalyticsCollectionEnabled(true);

This next line sets the minimum engagement time required before starting a session. The default value is 10000 ( 10 seconds) . Let’s make it 5 second.

firebaseAnalytics.setMinimumSessionDuration(5000);

Here we can set the duration of inactivity that terminates the current session. The default value 1800000 (30 minutes). Let’s make it 10.

firebaseAnalytics.setSessionTimeoutDuration(1000000);

Now let’s set some of the user properties as well. This line set the user ID property.

firebaseAnalytics.setUserId(String.valueOf(food.getId()));

And this set a user property to a given value.

firebaseAnalytics.setUserProperty("Food", food.getName());

Thats it. Really simple as it should be. Hope you will enjoy using the Firebase Analytics. Note: You might not be able to see the changes and reports right away but within 24 hours.

Ravi Tamada

Ravi is hardcore Android programmer and Android programming has been his passion since he compiled his first hello-world program. Solving real problems of Android developers through tutorials has always been interesting part for him.