Setup fails with 'writeKey must not be null or empty'

[danborthwick]

Using @segment/analytics-react-native v1.4.3 and @segment/analytics-react-native-intercom v1.4.3.

We recently updated a seemingly unrelated library, react-native-purchases, to v4.1.0. With the update, our app shows a React Native red box on startup with the message 'writeKey must not be null or empty'.

CatalystInstanceImpl caught native exception
 java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: writeKey
 	at com.segment.analytics.Analytics$Builder.<init>(Analytics.java:108
 	at com.segment.analytics.Analytics.with(Analytics.java:175)
 	at com.segment.analytics.reactnative.core.RNAnalyticsModule
 	at com.segment.analytics.reactnative.core.RNAnalyticsModule.setup(RNAnalyticsModule.kt:207)
 	at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Native Method)
 	at com.facebook.react.bridge.JavaMethodWrapper.in
 	at com.facebook.react.bridge.JavaModuleWrapper.invoke(JavaModuleWrapper.java:151)
 	at com.facebook.react.bridge.queue.NativeRunnable.run(Native Method)
 	at android.os.Handler.handleCallback(Handler.java:873)
 	at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99)
 	at com.facebook.react.bridge.queue.MessageQueueThreadH
 	at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:193)
 	at com.facebook.react.bridge.queue.Message
 	at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:764)

Debugging RNAnalyticsModule.setup() confirms that writeKey is being passed with a valid value. It also reveals an IllegalStateException being caught and ignored (line 190). While the comment in that catch block reads pass if the error is due to calling setSingletonInstance multiple times. However, the exception has the message java.lang.IllegalStateException: Method addObserver must be called on the main thread_. So it would seem that setup()'s first attempt to initialise a client is silently failing, then when analytics.track() is called from trackApplicationLifecycleEvents(), a second attempt is made to initialise a client which fails, causing the red box error.

Noting that the addObserver() call was surrounded by if (useNewLifecycleMethods) { I tried adding

    android: {
      experimentalUseNewLifecycleMethods: false,

to the call to segment.setup() in RN. This has no effect as experimentalUseNewLifecycleMethods is not passed through by configuration.ts. Modifying the Java code to force this to true causes setup() to appear to complete successfully, though I've not verified if there are any other side-effects.

[danborthwick]

If anyone needs a workaround, the combination of react-native-purchases@3.4.3 and @segment/analytics-react-native@1.3.2 appears to work and, in our case, was up to date enough for what we needed.

[gursesl]

Similar issue #274

[josinaldobarbosa]

I have the same problem with the following versions:
segment/analytics-react-native:^1.4.1
react-native-purchases:^4.1.0

I solved only changing to:
react-native-purchases:^3.4.3

[adirkz]

@danborthwick did you find a solution?

[dotansimha]

Same here. We do not use react-native-purchases at all, and it seems like this happens on in the built APK and not during development.

[tautvilas]

I have same problem after updating Stripe dependency to 16.4.3

[PabloLerma]

This is happening to us also, even without updating any relevant dependency

[Elter71]

This is happening to us also, even without updating any relevant dependency

Same

[NiklasMencke]

same problem since updating react-native-purchases and react-native-firebase depedencies.
Only occurs on android.

After rolling back step by step I could identify that the problem is actually not solvable by just reverting a version number.
It still persists and has to do with some nested dependencies in the yarn.lock. I couldnt identify which one it is, so I had to revert all dependency updates and now its working again.

UPDATE:
After further investigation I can for sure say that the issue is related to the latest version of react-native-purchases

[alanjcharles]

Closing since this is related to the react-native-purchases package which is not used by the analytics-react-native library in any way. I would recommend reaching out to the author of that package for further support. Please let me know if there is any additional evidence you would like me to consider to reopen this.

[dotansimha]

If that helps anyone, in our case, we moved from the native Android appsflyer library to Segment, and we kept the piece of code in MainActivity.java that does new Analytics.Builder. This was the cause for this error.

[nfcampos]

Hi guys,

This issue should not be closed. We are facing this in our app as well. react-native-purchases and analytics-react-native share a native android dependency. That dependency is androidx.lifecycle:lifecycle-process.

By updating react-native-purchases that shared dependency is updated to 2.3.0, which then makes segment analytics crash, as it is segment which appears to be incompatible with this newer version of this shared dependency.

Please see the release notes for this shared dependency which I'm sure will help you figure out what to fix on your side
https://developer.android.com/jetpack/androidx/releases/lifecycle#version_230_3

Thanks

[nobbyclark]

I'm also seeing this issue and I'm not using react-native-purchases