Table of Contents

• AndroidRadar
  • Getting Started
    • Add the jCenter repository
    • Add dependency on android-radar module
    • Add permissions to AndroidManifest.xml
  • How it works
  • Identifying the data
  • Known Issues
    • Possible Error Output when run using StrictMode

AndroidRadar

The easiest way to get started is by adding the android-radar Maven repository to your application's gradle build.

Getting Started

To get up and running quickly, we'll follow these steps:

1. Add the jCenter repository.
2. Add a dependency on the android-radar library module.
3. Specify Android permissions.
4. Execute Radar sessions programmatically.

Add a reference to the Cedexis Maven repository

In the allprojects configuration section, add a maven configuration below the jcenter call:

allprojects {
    repositories {
        jcenter()

        // For Cedexis Radar
        maven {
            url 'https://dl.bintray.com/pureops/cedexis-oss-maven'
        }
    }
}

Add dependency on android-radar module

In your application grade.build file, add a line to the dependencies section indicating the android-radar library. The latest version available:

// replace x, y and z with the latest version of the AndroidRadar library.
dependencies {
    ...
    compile 'com.cedexis:android-radar:x.y.z'
}

Add permissions to AndroidManifest.xml

The Radar client requires a couple of permissions in order to get its work done. These should be added to your application's AndroidManifest.xml file, inside the root <manifest> element and before the <application> element:

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

See the sample application's AndroidManifest.xml for a complete example.

How it works

In order to leverage the Cedexis Radar JavaScript client on Android, there is support to insert a WebView and load a simple HTML page containing the JavaScript client.

There are 3 different methods to use (as of 0.2.1):

Pass an Activity to Cedexis to lookup for the root container of the activity and inject an invisible WebView, using findViewById

Cedexis cedexis = Cedexis.init(Activity activity);

Pass your own container to inject a new invisible WebView in it:

Cedexis cedexis = Cedexis.init(ViewGroup container);

Pass directly a WebView to use it instead of injecting it. Warning: this method will hide the passed WebView from your activity.

Cedexis cedexis = Cedexis.init(WebView webView);

The Cedexis object can be initialized in your Activity#onCreate method and used in any part in which you would like to execute Radar measurements.

Each time you would like to send Radar measurements (normally from within Activity#onResume method), call:

Cedexis cedexis = getCedexis();
cedexis.start(zoneId, customerId);

This loads a hidden WebView in your Activity content and executes a single Radar session, which usually lasts no more than a couple of seconds.

If you call cedexis#start from Activity#onResume, the client will execute a Radar session each time the user returns to that activity.

That's it. Now every time the user navigates or returns to that activity, a Radar session will fire.

Note that to start a Radar object requires at least two integer arguments, namely your Cedexis zone and customer ids. You may already know these from correspondence with our team. In a pinch, these can be obtained when logged into the Cedexis Portal at https://portal.cedexis.com/ui/radar/tag. This page shows the JavaScript Radar tag with your zone and customer ids embedded.

By default the client measures platforms configured with HTTP URLs. To measure platforms with HTTPS URLs, pass an optional RadarScheme argument to cedexis.start.

For example:

Cedexis cedexis = getCedexis();
cedexis.start(zoneId, customerId, RadarScheme.HTTPS);

The two numbers in the URL (enclosed by the red box in the screenshot above) are your zone id and customer id, respectively.

Identifying the data

The long term goal is to distinguish Radar data from webview implementations explicitly, but for the time being, the best way is via the user agent string. A typical Android webview user agent string looks like this:

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 8.0.0; Pixel Build/OPR3.170623.008; wv) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/61.0.3163.98 Mobile Safari/537.36

Android webview user agent strings can be very diverse, but one thing that distinguishes them from regular Chrome for Android user agent strings is the "wv" bit. This isn't necessarily guaranteed, but seems to be common practice.

Known Issues

Possible Error Output when run using StrictMode

This only applies if you are using StrictMode in your development builds

As we are injecting an invisible WebView on the main UI thread, it is possible that you see an error like the following one:

StrictMode policy violation; ~duration=252 ms: android.os.StrictMode$StrictModeDiskReadViolation: policy=65543 violation=2
    at android.os.StrictMode$AndroidBlockGuardPolicy.onReadFromDisk(StrictMode.java:1263)
    at libcore.io.BlockGuardOs.read(BlockGuardOs.java:229)
    at libcore.io.IoBridge.read(IoBridge.java:468)
    at java.io.RandomAccessFile.read(RandomAccessFile.java:289)
    at java.io.RandomAccessFile.readFully(RandomAccessFile.java:416)
    at java.io.RandomAccessFile.readInt(RandomAccessFile.java:438)
    at java.util.zip.Zip64.parseZip64EocdRecordLocator(Zip64.java:99)
    at java.util.zip.ZipFile.readCentralDir(ZipFile.java:419)
    at java.util.zip.ZipFile.<init>(ZipFile.java:175)
    at java.util.zip.ZipFile.<init>(ZipFile.java:142)
    at android.webkit.WebViewFactory.getLoadFromApkPath(WebViewFactory.java:357)
    at android.webkit.WebViewFactory.getWebViewNativeLibraryPaths(WebViewFactory.java:407)
    at android.webkit.WebViewFactory.loadNativeLibrary(WebViewFactory.java:511)
    at android.webkit.WebViewFactory.getProviderClass(WebViewFactory.java:188)
    at android.webkit.WebViewFactory.getProvider(WebViewFactory.java:158)
    at android.webkit.WebView.getFactory(WebView.java:2277)
    at android.webkit.WebView.ensureProviderCreated(WebView.java:2272)
    at android.webkit.WebView.setOverScrollMode(WebView.java:2331)
    at android.view.View.<init>(View.java:3789)
    at android.view.View.<init>(View.java:3892)
    at android.view.ViewGroup.<init>(ViewGroup.java:573)
    at android.widget.AbsoluteLayout.<init>(AbsoluteLayout.java:55)
    at android.webkit.WebView.<init>(WebView.java:597)
    at android.webkit.WebView.<init>(WebView.java:542)
    at android.webkit.WebView.<init>(WebView.java:525)
    at android.webkit.WebView.<init>(WebView.java:512)
    at android.webkit.WebView.<init>(WebView.java:502)
    at com.cedexis.androidradar.RadarWebView.init(RadarWebView.java:53)
    at com.cedexis.simpleradardemo.MainActivity.onCreate(MainActivity.java:65)
    at android.app.Activity.performCreate(Activity.java:6237)
    at android.app.Instrumentation.callActivityOnCreate(Instrumentation.java:1107)
    at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2369)
    at android.app.ActivityThread.handleLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2476)
    at android.app.ActivityThread.-wrap11(ActivityThread.java)
    at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:1344)
    at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:102)
    at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:148)
    at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:5417)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Native Method)
    at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:726)
    at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:616)

This comes from a bug in the WebView constructor, you can see more information about this over the AOSP bug tracker: [here] (https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=77886&can=1&q=strictmode%20webview&colspec=ID%20Status%20Priority%20Owner%20Summary%20Stars%20Reporter%20Opened)