Property with JSON dictionary value getting turned into empty array properties

[IainS1986]

Describe the bug
We send up a 'config' of multiple Key/Value pairs as a single property in a tracking event.

This is done as a single JSON string.

We've noticed (but not 100% sure from when, we think when going from Xamarin to this nuget) that the Values of the all the Key/Value pairs are coming out as empty json arrays []

Expected behavior
The internal properties are not altered.

Screenshots
Here are some screenshots showing what we are sending, and then a screenshot of the raw data as appearing in Segment.

Screenshot of the 'Properties' object about to be sent the Analytics.Track function

Here's the config property expanded, showing it a string that contains JSON data with different values.

However, here's how the data is appearing in Segment.

Platform (please complete the following information):

• Library Version in use: Confirmed live in 2.4.2, not tested live with 2.5.0 though.
• Platform being tested: Android + iOS

[wenxi-zeng]

Hi @IainS1986 thanks for reporting this issue. can you confirm which track method are you calling? is it this one from compat? can you also please provide a sample usage of the method so we can try to replicate on our end? thanks!

[IainS1986]

Hi @wenxi-zeng

This is the track event function we are using (on the Analytics instance) - we aren't using the Compat one. Should we?

Usage is a bit tricky to give easily, other than what is shown above (the dictionary shown in the examples above is just whats passed as the properties in the Track event).

So would be,

_analytics.Track(event.EventName, event.Parameters)

Where the event object parameters dictionary is just build from the function you see in the screenshots above.

The Analytics instance is constructed as such...

// NOTE: to make Analytics stateless/in-memory,
// add `InMemoryStorageProvider` to the configuration
var configuration = new Configuration(SegmentKey,
    flushAt: 20,
    flushInterval: 30);
_analytics = new Analytics(configuration);

[IainS1986]

So break pointing in the Analytics.cs logic I can see the issue is in the Track event

        string json = JsonUtility.ToJson((object) properties);
        this.Track(name, JsonUtility.FromJson<JsonObject>(json), enrichment);

Heres two screenshots where you can see the 'Config' property has values fine, but then when going to the inner track event with JsonObject it then just has empty arrays

[IainS1986]

I guess because we have a json string as the value instead of another dictionary, something is messing up in the multiple 'toJson' serialising going on

I think we can maybe fix it by not doing a json serialisation ourselves and instead passing the raw dictionary for Config but quite an odd behaviour

[wenxi-zeng]

hi @IainS1986 I see JObject as the type of the value in the dictionary. are you using Newtonsoft's Json.NET? if so, make sure you are targeting to .netstandard 1.3. this SDK uses Json.NET on .netstandard 1.3, and System.Text.Json on .netstandard 2.0. these two json libraries don't understand each other. you will have to provide your own serializer and deserializer if you want to use a mixture of them.

or alternatively, upgrade your json library to System.Text.Json

[IainS1986]

Yeah we're using Json.Net.

Makes sense! Did the old Xamarin sdk use Json.Net and that's why it's only just become an issue since migrating? Or I guess maybe when we switched to .net8 - .netstandard2.0 took over too.

To be honest, I've fixed it for now by not serialising to a json string and passing that through and instead just passing a Dictionary<string,object> through and letting Segment serialise it

[wenxi-zeng]

yes, the old Xamarin SDK uses Json.Net. we will add a note to the migration doc to highlight this difference. the SDK is designed this way for 2 reasons:

1. there are people prefer to use one over the other and don't like to keep both json libraries on their app. so we provide the option to switch to the preferred one
2. this SDK is made to be compatible with the old frameworks and unity, which only supports Json.NET

glad you already have a fix! yeah, the compat method is designed for accepting Dictionary<string,object> from the old library. just make sure the property you want to keep is serializable, or it will become empty values.

I'm closing this issue out for now. feel free to reopen it if you are still experience issue. thanks!