topic Re: Can I instrument Android app bundles with the manual method? in Real User Monitoring

Can I instrument Android app bundles with the manual method?

alejandro_herna — Wed, 05 Sep 2018 22:05:47 GMT

The documentation states that It's not possible to instrument Android app bundles with Android Gradle plugin and command line instrumentation methods, however there's a manual method:
https://www.dynatrace.com/support/help/user-experi...
Can I instrument Android App bundles with the manual method?
If not, is Dynatrace working on it so it can be supported? is there a date?

Re: Can I instrument Android app bundles with the manual method?

paul_schlagitwe — Thu, 06 Sep 2018 07:39:14 GMT

Hi @alejandro h.,

Yes you can use manual instrumentation for Android App Bundles.
Just add the following to the dependencies-block in your base modules build.gradle:

api 'com.dynatrace.agent:agent-android:7.1+'

If you correctly set up your application - meaning that all feature modules have a dependency to the base module - then you should be able to do Dynatrace API calls from everywhere.

Make sure to insert the Dynatrace.startup(...) somewhere in the base module. Preferably in the onCreate method of your main activity.

For more on manual instrumentation please follow the documentation.

Regarding Auto-Instrumentation via command line or the Dynatrace Gradle Plugin:
Right now Android App Bundles and Instant Apps are not supported!
However there are efforts to support both in the future but for now the only way is to manually instrument.
And no, there is no date yet, all I can say is that the upcoming version 7.2 will still lack support for that.

Best regards,
Paul

Re: Can I instrument Android app bundles with the manual method?

alejandro_herna — Thu, 13 Sep 2018 16:46:16 GMT

Thank you @Paul S.

Re: Can I instrument Android app bundles with the manual method?

mobileappsuppor — Wed, 01 May 2019 09:55:10 GMT

I'm using Dynatrace and wish to only have it applied for development flavour using product flavours(i have created 2 flavours in app development/production) in gradle: if possible please let me know how to setup the gradle file for auto instrument using product flavors in Android.

productFlavors
{development {

    }
    production {
    }
}

looking forward to hearing from you.

Re: Can I instrument Android app bundles with the manual method?

paul_schlagitwe — Thu, 02 May 2019 11:39:52 GMT

By default the dynatrace plugin is applied to all flavors. If you want to have different configurations for your flavors you can use something like:

android{

productFlavors {
   production{
      ...
   }
   development{
      ...
   }
}
}
...
dynatrace {
  defaultConfig { // applies to all flavors except for those defined below
    applicationId '<DEV_ApplicationID>'
    beaconURL '<ProvidedBeaconURL>'
  }

  productFlavors {
    production{ // name of your flavor
      applicationId '<PROD_ApplicationID>'
      beaconURL '<ProvidedBeaconURL>'
    }
  }
}

If you only define one flavor the configuration for all other flavors falls back to the defaultConfig which cannot be omitted in this case.
Unfortunately its not yet possible to have the instrumentation for one flavor and do not instrument another flavor.
However there is a workaround for that. In this case you would have to define a property (ie "instrument") and if you pass this property to your gradle task (ie: gradlew assembleRelease -Pinstrument) then the plugin is applied and the build is instrumented.
In your gradle file you have to define an if condition:

<code>if(project.hasProperty('instrument')) {
  apply plugin: 'com.dynatrace.tools.android'
  dynatrace {
    defaultConfig {
      applicationId '<YourApplicationID>'
      beaconURL '<ProvidedBeaconURL>'
    }
  }
}<br>

Thats not very pleasant but improvement is on the way. There will be a new major version of the dynatrace plugin in a few months that will have a much better support for usecases like that.

Re: Can I instrument Android app bundles with the manual method?

mobileappsuppor — Thu, 02 May 2019 14:35:21 GMT

Hi @Paul S.
Thanks for instant reply i have applied your workaround(had set property in gradle and run(ie: gradlew assembleRelease -Pinstrument) then the plugin is applied and the build is not instrumented) getting auto instrument failed (No java found) ,although system already has installed java path to environment variables(system variables).
also dynatrace log is not being generated.

Looking forward for a solution earliest.

Thanks!

Re: Can I instrument Android app bundles with the manual method?

paul_schlagitwe — Fri, 03 May 2019 05:44:47 GMT

@Mobileapp S.
Did it work previously? Before you applied the workaround?
What agent version are you using? Latest is 7.2.4.
The auto-instrumentor requires a JDK (not JRE!) with version 1.8 or higher.
Before you run "gradlew ..." in your terminal, can you verify the output of "echo %JAVA_HOME%" (if you are on windows, otherwise: "echo $JAVA_HOME").
The path should point to your java JDK installation.

Re: Can I instrument Android app bundles with the manual method?

mobileappsuppor — Fri, 03 May 2019 06:11:33 GMT

@Paul S.
Yes previously it was instrument and yes i am using latest version 7.2.4 and java version 1.8 version.

"echo %JAVA_HOME% pointed to java installation path(C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_172)

Re: Can I instrument Android app bundles with the manual method?

paul_schlagitwe — Fri, 03 May 2019 06:21:19 GMT

Can you also verify if the following file exists: %JAVA_HOME%\bin\jar
If not, its not a JDK but a JRE (despite the name jdk1.8.0)

If it does exist we need to dig deeper and I need to take a look at your build.gradle file.
Can you open a support ticket?

Re: Can I instrument Android app bundles with the manual method?

mobileappsuppor — Fri, 03 May 2019 06:47:36 GMT

@Paul S.
%JAVA_HOME%\bin\jar
Yes it exists there, please find the attach screenshot.

Todays is our release plan looking forawrd to a earlist response.

Re: Can I instrument Android app bundles with the manual method?

paul_schlagitwe — Fri, 03 May 2019 06:54:54 GMT

That looks fine.
Can you open a support ticket and provide your build.gradle file along with the exact error message you receive when you type the "gradlew assembleRelease -pInstrument" (or replace "assembleRelease" with whatever buildtype you want to build")

Re: Can I instrument Android app bundles with the manual method?

rswarnka — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 05:07:44 GMT

May I know Where is the documentation of the API method calls?