Flutter and Google Analytics: How to effortlessly integrate

Flutter How To: Simple | To the Point| Short

Flutter Dev Level: Intermediate

1.0 Objective

• Track User interaction with your Flutter app using Google Analytics

2.0 Sample Project Github Link

https://github.com/AbdurM/flutter_google_analytics_example

3.0 The Steps

Step 1: Create a firebase account if you don’t have one

• Go to https://console.firebase.google.com/
• Create an account if you don’t have one

Step 2: Click on create new project (if you don’t have one)

Step 3: Enable google Analytics while creating the project

Step 4: Create or choose an existing google analytics account.

Step 5: Add flutter packages to the app

• Go to your code editor (VS Code in my case) or open root of your project inside the terminal.
• Run this command to add firebase core

flutter pub add firebase_core 

• then run this command to add firebase analytics.

flutter pub add firebase_analytics

Step 6: Add your app to the firebase project

• Run the following command while still being in the root of your project.

flutterfire configure

• Select the relevant project (In our example, we created it in Step 1- 4)

• Select relevant platforms

• Press Y and proceed when asked.

• Once done, the above file will be generated.

Step 7: Initialize firebase

• Add the following two lines of code before run app in the main method.

WidgetsFlutterBinding.ensureInitialized();
await Firebase.initializeApp();

Step 8: Start tracking events

• Wherever you want to track events, import the firebase_analytics plugin

import 'package:firebase_analytics/firebase_analytics.dart';

• Now you can use the log methods on the analytics instance to log events. Example below

FirebaseAnalytics.instance.logEvent(name: 'increment_button_press');

IMPORTANT: There are only few formats that google analytics accept the log event name in. I would recommend snake_case (Example: ‘sample_event_name’). Please note that if the format that you follow is’nt from the list then it would not be logged.

• There’s an array of log events available

• More info here: https://support.google.com/firebase/topic/6317484

Step 9: Debug Events

• Usually, events are uploaded roughly every hour to save battery and network usage.
• However, to debug or to verify if everything is working as expected, you can use debug view to upload events almost immediately.
• To enable analytics debug mode on Android, run the following command in your terminal, while your device is connected / Emulator is running.

adb shell setprop debug.firebase.analytics.app PACKAGE_NAME

• Note: You can find the package name in AndroidManifest.xml

Step 10: TEST TEST TEST

• Go back to cloud console.
• On the left navigation tab, under analytics click on Debug View

• Run your flutter app
• Within debug view, select your debug device

• Start interacting with the app see the logs coming through

Woohoo! You have now integrated google analytics with your Flutter app.

That’s all for this one. Hope it helped :-)

Github link:
https://github.com/AbdurM/flutter_google_analytics_example

Please find more flutter articles here: https://medium.com/@rafayk66/abdurs-flutter-articles-c201eff334b8

You can find me on
LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/knowabdur
Twitter: — https://twitter.com/AbdurDeveloper

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