Firebase Analytics seemingly works perfect, but just won't show up?

Question

In a large app which uses Firebase extensively, I'm trying analytics,

-FIRDebugEnabled is set fine.

The date/time on the devices is set correctly.

I have tried all of simulator, tethered device, and even building through to TestFlight.

The needed stuff is in app startup ..

    FirebaseConfiguration.shared.setLoggerLevel(.max)
    FirebaseApp.configure()
    // helps Analytics get going:
    AnalyticsConfiguration.shared().setAnalyticsCollectionEnabled(true)

Again, Firebase realtime and database works perfectly throughout.

So using Analytics.logEvent# ...

Note that the items appear perfectly in Xcode console:

2018-07-24 08:27:23.868 Blah[7501] <Debug> [Firebase/Analytics][I-ACS023105] Event is
not subject to real-time event count daily limit. Marking an event as
real-time. Event name, parameters: select_content, {
        firebase_event_origin (_o) = app;
        firebase_realtime (_r) = 1;
        item_name = tapMyProfile;
        firebase_screen_class (_sc) = Blah.SomeScreen;
        firebase_debug (_dbg) = 1;
        firebase_screen_id (_si) = 8314738347840858914;
        item_id = Blah-tapMyProfile;
        content_type = tapMyProfile;
    }

or ...

2018-07-24 08:56:12.393306-0500 Blah[7501:135963] [Firebase/Analytics][I-ACS023073] Debug
mode is enabled. Marking event as debug and real-time. Event name,
parameters: select_content, {
    firebase_event_origin (_o) = app;
    firebase_screen (_sn) = MyProfile;
    item_name = tapCamera;
    firebase_realtime (_r) = 1;
    firebase_screen_class (_sc) = Blah.OldDevDotScreen;
    firebase_debug (_dbg) = 1;
    firebase_screen_id (_si) = 8314738347840858915;
    item_id = Blah-tapCamera;
    content_type = tapCamera;
}

Notice tapMyProfile or tapCamera, one of my custom events from Analytics.logEvent#

Analytics as such does seem to be working perfectly:

so, those numbers update every few hours etc.

Again every item appears perfectly in the Xcode console ..

But no matter what, nothing will show up on the Firebase debug console!

Nothing!

What the hell could the problem be?

(Additionally I have waited a day or more and they don't show up as events either.)

How can it be that just nothing is showing up in Debug???

Answer 1

TL:DR - Delete your app from your device / simulator, rebuild and launch from XCode.

I faced this exact same issue even though Firebase and Firebase Analytics in particular seemed to be set up perfectly.

I cannot give the exact logical explanation yet as to why this worked, however one hint came from this Firebase events tutorial at around 5 mins 30.

He mentions that the -FIRAnalyticsDebugEnabled settings get saved to disk.

So after configuring & integrating Firebase, I ran my app which was already installed to test everything works fine and it did but the Firebase Console did not show me any messages of app events.

It's good to double check that you are not using special characters when sending your events and also not going over the character threshold, however even if you make these errors, you should see default events of screen_open, app_open, user_engagement which were not showing up for me.

My only theory is that launching the app from an already installed state does not impact the new settings of -FIRAnalyticsDebugEnabled.

So when I deleted my app, re-build and run from XCode, the events start showing up.

Finally, while testing, you might use another device and you might wonder, I was seeing my events from the previous device but nothing happens for the next one which baffled me for a few moments, remember to switch the device

However, in conclusion, I can say this behavior is far from reliable and because after a period of time (2-3 hours) when I ran my app again, nothing showed up on the Firebase Console again as if -FIRAnalyticsDebugEnabled had been disabled.

Deleting and reinstalling worked again.

Update for 2022

The above steps still applies. Just 2 more additions of why you might not see events you seem to be logging successfully:

• Do a clean + build + run

• There are some keywords that seem to not get logged because they are probably already in use by the Analytics framework. For example when I was trying to track a search event and one of the keys in my parameters dictionary was keyword and this never seemed to get tracked so use something else and give it a go