expo: [expo-firebase-analytics] setCurrentScreen method does not set page title

🐛 Bug Report

Google Analytics shows (not set) as a page title when using setCurrentScreen method.

Summary of Issue

I use expo-firebase-analytics and react-navigation to log the name of the current screen using setCurrentScreen method on each route change.

On the Google Analytics side the event is received, but the page title is (not set).

Environment - output of `expo diagnostics` & the platform(s) you’re targeting

Targeting platforms - Android and IOS.

 Expo CLI 3.22.3 environment info:
    System:
      OS: macOS Mojave 10.14.6
      Shell: 3.2.57 - /bin/bash
    Binaries:
      Node: 12.16.3 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v12.16.3/bin/node
      Yarn: 1.22.4 - /usr/local/bin/yarn
      npm: 6.14.4 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v12.16.3/bin/npm
    IDEs:
      Android Studio: 4.0 AI-193.6911.18.40.6626763
      Xcode: 11.3.1/11C505 - /usr/bin/xcodebuild
    npmPackages:
      expo: ^37.0.0 => 37.0.12 
      react: 16.9.0 => 16.9.0 
      react-dom: 16.9.0 => 16.9.0 
      react-native: https://github.com/expo/react-native/archive/sdk-37.0.1.tar.gz => 0.61.4 
    npmGlobalPackages:
      expo-cli: 3.22.3

Steps to Reproduce

Follow the guide: https://docs.expo.io/versions/latest/sdk/firebase-analytics/.
Install and configure react-navigation to log events on each route change: https://reactnavigation.org/docs/screen-tracking/.

Basically, react-navigation is configured properly, the proper route name is passed to the setCurrentScreen function and it is invoked.

So the problem seems to be in the library itself.

The code:

const previousRouteName = routeNameRef.current;
const currentRouteName = navigationRef.current.getCurrentRoute().name

    if (previousRouteName !== currentRouteName) {
        screenTracker.trackRoute(currentRouteName);
    }
}

<NavigationContainer
    onStateChange={onRouteChange}
>
...

// screenTracker.ts
import * as Analytics from "expo-firebase-analytics";

export const trackRoute = (route: string) => {
    Analytics.setCurrentScreen(route);
};

One thing to note, as I was looking at the source code and found out that what it does is sending the following event:

await this.logEvent('screen_view', {
    screen_name: screenName,
});

So I tried to replace the setCurrentScreen with this code bit it still did not work:

// screenTracker.ts
import * as Analytics from "expo-firebase-analytics";

export const trackRoute = (route: string) => {
    Analytics.logEvent('screen_view', { screen_name: route });
};

But when I added page_title to the parameters it started working, but only if I send events from my local machine using IOS or Android emulator.

After doing QA build (not set) is still visible:

// screenTracker.ts
import * as Analytics from "expo-firebase-analytics";

export const trackRoute = (route: string) => {
    Analytics.logEvent('screen_view', { screen_name: route, page_title: route });
};

Could you please give some advices on how to handle that?

Expected Behavior vs Actual Behavior

Expected behavior: page title is displayed.

Actual behavior: page title is (not set).

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 4 years ago
Reactions: 8
Comments: 17 (6 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

This seems to be an upstream problem with Firebase https://firebase.googleblog.com/2020/08/google-analytics-manual-screen-view.html

We’ve got it working using EAS + Expo Config Plugins and just disabled logging via Javascript SDK in Expo Go clients. It would be good if this is included as an option in the expo-firebase-analytics package.

// with-firebase-automatic-screen-reporting-disabled.js
const {
  AndroidConfig,
  withInfoPlist,
  withAndroidManifest,
  withPlugins,
} = require("@expo/config-plugins");

const { addMetaDataItemToMainApplication, getMainApplicationOrThrow } =
  AndroidConfig.Manifest;

module.exports = function withFirebaseAutomaticScreenReportingDisabled(config) {
  return withPlugins(config, [
    [
      withInfoPlist,
      function (config) {
        config.modResults["FirebaseAutomaticScreenReportingEnabled"] = false;
        return config;
      },
    ],
    [
      withAndroidManifest,
      function (config) {
        const mainApplication = getMainApplicationOrThrow(config.modResults);
        addMetaDataItemToMainApplication(
          mainApplication,
          "google_analytics_automatic_screen_reporting_enabled",
          "false"
        );
        return config;
      },
    ],
  ]);
};

// app.json or app.config.js
{
  "name": "...",
  "slug": "...",
  "plugins": ["./with-firebase-automatic-screen-reporting-disabled"]
}

Make sure you are logging the events manually

analytics.logEvent("screen_view", { "screen_name": "FooScreen" })

nujhong on Sep 3, 2021

Hi! The page_title field is a web specific field which you will typically not see when using native logging. Your workaround using page_title might work in the standard Expo client because it uses a JavaScript based implementation of Google Analytics. However when you create a release version, your app will use the native Firebase Analytics SDK setCurrentScreen, method which only takes the screen_name and screen_class as arguments.

IjzerenHein on Oct 8, 2020

Also seem to be having this issue, (not set) is our top screen view in Firebase

theianjohnson on Jun 11, 2021

AFAIK it should be working because it’s just manual logging even though I haven’t caught up with the updates. If you have pushed events before adding the change it might have confused you (it did for me) in the analytics report (e.g. you might want to filter out older events).

Some things I’ve tried:

Use firebase DebugView to inspect the event params
Inspect network requests (payload being sent over https)

I hope that helps.

nujhong on May 5, 2022

@jeloagnasin - sdk 40 is not the latest version though, it’s sdk 41.

@nicib83 - you could create a config plugin to do that with eas build: https://docs.expo.io/guides/config-plugins/ - note that config plugins do not run on expo build they only run on eas build

more info on the differences in these blog posts

brentvatne on May 20, 2021