Add in-client sessionization

[alexanderdean]

It would be nice to create a way of doing client-side sessionization, somewhat similar to how the JavaScript Tracker does it:

The JavaScript Tracker sets a first-party cookie to track the Snowplow session. This
cookie is kept up to date with the latest activity. When there is a gap (of 30 minutes) in
activity, then the session index is incremented. This is sent through as vid here:

https://github.com/snowplow/snowplow/wiki/snowplow-tracker-protocol#15-user-related-parameters

It would be nice to do something equivalent for mobile. A few questions:

1. How should we define the end of a session? Inactivity? Backgrounding? Something else?
2. Should we make session definition customizable, or is that a world of pain?
3. Where should this live? Do we overload the vid field or add this to the mobile context? Overloading vid feels a little messy but semantically this is the exact same data: the session index for a given client platform

/cc @yalisassoon @azsmith

[yalisassoon]

From a purist perspective, I think sessionization should be done
server-side rather than client-side. If it's easy to do it client side then
by all means do it, but if it's not, then push that logic further down the
data pipeline.

On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 7:08 PM, Alexander Dean notifications@github.comwrote:

It would be nice to create a way of doing client-side sessionization,
somewhat similar to how the JavaScript Tracker does it:

The JavaScript Tracker sets a first-party cookie to track the Snowplow
session. This
cookie is kept up to date with the latest activity. When there is a gap
(of 30 minutes) in
activity, then the session index is incremented. This is sent through as
vid here:

https://github.com/snowplow/snowplow/wiki/snowplow-tracker-protocol#15-user-related-parameters

It would be nice to do something equivalent for mobile. A few questions:

1. How should we define the end of a session? Inactivity?
   Backgrounding? Something else?
2. Should we make session definition customizable, or is that a world
   of pain?
3. Where should this live? Do we overload the vid field or add this to
   the mobile context? Overloading vid feels a little messy but
   semantically this is the exact same data: the session index for a given
   client platform

/cc @yalisassoon https://github.com/yalisassoon @azsmithhttps://github.com/azsmith

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Snowplow Analytics http://snowplowanalytics.com/
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@yalisassoon https://twitter.com/yalisassoonhttps://twitter.com/yalisassoon

[alexanderdean]

I'm not sure if it's an expectation that mobile trackers will do client-side sessionization - @azsmith, @jonalmeida what have you seen of this in the other trackers? In any case, let's kick this to 0.2.0 so we have some time to figure out

[alexanderdean]

Depends on snowplow/iglu-central#180

[alexanderdean]

We will populate a new context, ^^