How to automatically collect analytics events for button click in android?

Question

I have to implement Automatic Event Tracking in android

Need to automatically collect analytics data on all button clicks and page views but it has to be done in a generic way so that I don't need to write the Analytics code again for every click.

Example: I have 2 buttons on my activity each of them having a click listener. Now i want to call Analytics.track(String buttonName) so that i do not have to add this in every click listener. The data that should be passed in tracking is button Name.

Answer 1

A way (probably not the ultimate way) to do that could be extending Button (or View), and putting analytics code into the View#performClick() method.

As for the buttonName, it can be a a field of your custom View class, that you can set programmatically or even via an XML custom attribute.

Global implementation :

• Create a custom XML attribut : create a file named attrs.xml in the ressource folder :

  <resources>
      <declare-styleable name="tracking">
          <attr name="tracking_name" format="string" />
      </declare-styleable>
  </resources>
  

• Create a custom Button (or View) class, that overwrite performClick() method and call Analytics.track() with the string gotten from your XML custom attribute or set programmatically :

  public class TrackedClickButton extends Button {
  
      private String mTrackingName;
  
      public TrackedClickButton(Context context) {
          super(context);
      }
  
      public TrackedClickButton(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
          super(context, attrs);
          init(context, attrs);
      }
  
      public TrackedClickButton(Context context, AttributeSet attrs, int defStyleAttr) {
          super(context, attrs, defStyleAttr);
          init(context, attrs);
      }
  
      @TargetApi(21)
      public TrackedClickButton(Context context, AttributeSet attrs, int defStyleAttr, int defStyleRes) {
          super(context, attrs, defStyleAttr, defStyleRes);
          init(context, attrs);
      }
  
      private void init(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
          TypedArray array = context.obtainStyledAttributes(attrs, R.styleable.tracking);
  
          if (array.hasValue(R.styleable.tracking_name)) {
              mTrackingName = array.getString(R.styleable.tracking_name);
          }
      }
  
      public void setTrackingName(String trackingName) {
          this.mTrackingName = trackingName;
      }
  
      @Override
      public boolean performClick() {
          //Make sure the view has an onClickListener that listened the click event,
          //so that we don't report click on passive elements
          boolean clickHasBeenPerformed = super.performClick();
          if(clickHasBeenPerformed && mTrackingName != null) {
              Analytics.track(mTrackingName);
          }
          return clickHasBeenPerformed;
      }
  }
  

• Use your new class everywhere you want to track the event, for example in a layout file :

  <com.heysolutions.dentsply.Activites.MainActivity.TrackedClickButton
      xmlns:tracking="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
      android:id="@+id/button"
      android:layout_width="50dp"
      android:layout_height="50dp"
      tracking:tracking_name="buttonTrackingName"/>
  

Once again, this is one way, may be some other easier/better/better with your implementation ways :)