Context is sometimes not complete

[cdedreuille]

• analytics-react-native version: 2.2.0
• Integrations versions (if used):
• React Native version: 0.68
• iOS or Android or both? iOS

Following this discussion #524 I'm trying to add a token in context.device.token but I still have very inconsistent behaviour. Sometimes the context will have all the data with the new token I just added but sometimes it will only have the token.

I tried to implement the new onContextLoaded() callback method but I might do something wrong.
Here is my code. Any chance you could tell me what I'm doing wrong?

import messaging from '@react-native-firebase/messaging';
import {
  Plugin,
  PluginType,
  SegmentEvent,
} from '@segment/analytics-react-native';
import type { SegmentClient } from '@segment/analytics-react-native/lib/typescript/src/analytics';
import * as Device from 'expo-device';

export default class CustomerIOPlugin extends Plugin {
  type = PluginType.before;

  configure(analytics: SegmentClient) {
    this.analytics = analytics;

    this.analytics.onContextLoaded(async () => {
      const token = await messaging().getToken();
      this.analytics?.context.set({
        device: {
          token,
        },
      });
    });
  }

  execute(event: SegmentEvent) {
    return event;
  }
}

[oscb]

Thanks for bringing this up, this is a limitation in our current library we weren't aware of. Currently we are not deep merging the context object, so the correct way to set it should be like:

this.analytics?.context.set({
        device: {
          ...this.analytics?.context.device,
          token,
        },
      });

However this does not feel great. I think we should do the deepmerging where possible, specially to prevent concurrency issues. I'll work on adding that so that your code works, but feel free to use the above if you want to get unblocked for now.

[cdedreuille]

Thanks for your answer @oscb. This feels cleaner indeed but I think there's some typescript issues here, no?

[cdedreuille]

I tried with this code but I still randomly get a device object with the token only.

export default class CustomerIOPlugin extends Plugin {
  type = PluginType.before;

  configure(analytics: SegmentClient) {
    this.analytics = analytics;

    this.analytics.onContextLoaded(async () => {
      const token = await messaging().getToken();
      this.analytics?.context.set({
        device: {
          // eslint-disable-next-line @typescript-eslint/ban-ts-comment
          // @ts-ignore
          ...this.analytics?.context.device,
          token,
        },
      });
    });
  }

  execute(event: SegmentEvent) {
    return event;
  }
}

The only solution I could find for now is to recreate entirely the device object like this:

export default class CustomerIOPlugin extends Plugin {
  type = PluginType.before;

  configure(analytics: SegmentClient) {
    this.analytics = analytics;

    this.analytics.onContextLoaded(async () => {
      const token = await messaging().getToken();
      this.analytics?.context.set({
        device: {
          type: Device.osName ? Device.osName : undefined,
          manufacturer: Device.manufacturer ? Device.manufacturer : undefined,
          model: Device.modelId ? Device.modelId : undefined,
          name: Device.modelName ? Device.modelName : undefined,
          token,
        },
      });
    });
  }

  execute(event: SegmentEvent) {
    return event;
  }
}

[509dave16]

@cdedreuille for a short term workaround is it possible for you to change the stage at which your custom plugin operates from PluginType.before to PluginType.enrichment? The InjectContext Plugin is currently operating at the PluginType.before stage. To ensure that it always injects the context before your plugin decorates it, you could just change your plugin's type to PluginType.enrichment.

[oscb]

@cdedreuille pardon me, the snippet I gave you was incorrect, it should be ...this.analytics?.context.get().device,

The PR to handle deepmerging of the context just went out, will be out in the next release today/tomorrow.

By the way, the suggestion of making it an enrichment plugin is another good approach. It can be similar to InjectContext but injecting the token to the events at the enrichment phase of the timeline. We could do a better job showing up examples like this on how to leverage the timeline to add additional information on the events!

Anyway your original code will work as soon as we get the fix out.

[cdedreuille]

@509dave16 I tried to change the plugin type but it didn't change anything. I also tried to add this ...this.analytics?.context.get().device @oscb but it seems that the data always used a cache versions. Even if I updated the text it's not doing anything.

I think I'll stick to my solution of recreating the device object for now as this seems to be the most stable version but I hope this could be changed at some point in the future.