Firebase screen views double up?

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Ricky D'Amelio

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May 23, 2019, 9:52:43 AM5/23/19
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We are seeing some very high screen view numbers, and as much as I'd like them to be true, I did some debug digging in the console.

It appears that every time I change tabs, or push onto a navigation stack in our iOS app, two "screen_view" events are fired. 

Screen Shot 2019-05-23 at 14.46.13.pngScreen Shot 2019-05-23 at 14.11.53.pngScreen Shot 2019-05-23 at 14.12.00.png


You can see here I've come from a tab called Today and gone into the News tab. Why are there two screen_view events, and scarily, does this mean that we are reporting two screen views whenever someone changes tabs or pushes something onto the navigation stack?


P.S: I will just add, again, that this is just one reason why automatic screen tracking is a bad thing to force people to participate in. We have no idea of what activity is occurring in our own app and it's very annoying.


Kato Richardson

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May 24, 2019, 11:46:43 AM5/24/19
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Hi Ricky,

Can you make sure you're on the latest SDK versions, turn on debug logging, and share some of the output around the screen switching? If you have BigQuery enabled, might also be interesting to see what that's reporting.

☼, Kato

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Ricky D'Amelio

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May 27, 2019, 10:58:50 AM5/27/19
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Hi Kato.

Thanks for the response. We are indeed using BigQuery and the results there are much more realistic. The below query reports 36% of the total that Firebase does for the same date range. I am querying by screen name because all the screens we want to track in the app are named.

SELECT 
  count(1) as count
FROM 
  `xxx_*`,
  UNNEST(event_params) as params
WHERE
  (_TABLE_SUFFIX BETWEEN FORMAT_DATE("%Y%m%d", "2019-05-06") AND FORMAT_DATE("%Y%m%d", "2019-05-08"))
   AND
  (event_name = "screen_view" AND params.key = "firebase_screen")

We are on one of the latest Firebase SDK versions, version 5.20.1. All our view controllers receive the right sequence and number of viewWillAppear:, viewDidAppear:, etc methods. I am uploading a snippet of the console when I change from one tab (Today) to another tab (News). For brevity I am uploading it to a separate file here.

Please let me know if you require anything further to try pinpoint this issue.

On Saturday, 25 May 2019 01:46:43 UTC+10, Kato Richardson wrote:
Hi Ricky,

Can you make sure you're on the latest SDK versions, turn on debug logging, and share some of the output around the screen switching? If you have BigQuery enabled, might also be interesting to see what that's reporting.

☼, Kato

On Thu, May 23, 2019 at 6:52 AM Ricky D'Amelio <ricky....@crocmedia.com> wrote:
We are seeing some very high screen view numbers, and as much as I'd like them to be true, I did some debug digging in the console.

It appears that every time I change tabs, or push onto a navigation stack in our iOS app, two "screen_view" events are fired. 

Screen Shot 2019-05-23 at 14.46.13.pngScreen Shot 2019-05-23 at 14.11.53.pngScreen Shot 2019-05-23 at 14.12.00.png


You can see here I've come from a tab called Today and gone into the News tab. Why are there two screen_view events, and scarily, does this mean that we are reporting two screen views whenever someone changes tabs or pushes something onto the navigation stack?


P.S: I will just add, again, that this is just one reason why automatic screen tracking is a bad thing to force people to participate in. We have no idea of what activity is occurring in our own app and it's very annoying.


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Ricky D'Amelio

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May 27, 2019, 10:59:00 AM5/27/19
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Okay so have been doing some further digging, it seems if I disable the "naming" of view controllers, the double events stop.

Example:
- (void)viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated
{
    [super viewDidAppear:animated];
    [FIRAnalytics setScreenName:@"News" screenClass:nil]; // Commenting out this line works.
}

I struggle to understand how this is happening or wrong. Your documentation states:
/// ...
/// The class name can optionally be overridden by calling this
/// method in the viewDidAppear callback of your UIViewController and specifying the
/// screenClassOverride parameter. setScreenName:screenClass: must be called after
/// [super viewDidAppear:].
/// ...

And I believe this is what we are doing?

On Saturday, 25 May 2019 01:46:43 UTC+10, Kato Richardson wrote:
Hi Ricky,

Can you make sure you're on the latest SDK versions, turn on debug logging, and share some of the output around the screen switching? If you have BigQuery enabled, might also be interesting to see what that's reporting.

☼, Kato

On Thu, May 23, 2019 at 6:52 AM Ricky D'Amelio <ricky....@crocmedia.com> wrote:
We are seeing some very high screen view numbers, and as much as I'd like them to be true, I did some debug digging in the console.

It appears that every time I change tabs, or push onto a navigation stack in our iOS app, two "screen_view" events are fired. 

Screen Shot 2019-05-23 at 14.46.13.pngScreen Shot 2019-05-23 at 14.11.53.pngScreen Shot 2019-05-23 at 14.12.00.png


You can see here I've come from a tab called Today and gone into the News tab. Why are there two screen_view events, and scarily, does this mean that we are reporting two screen views whenever someone changes tabs or pushes something onto the navigation stack?


P.S: I will just add, again, that this is just one reason why automatic screen tracking is a bad thing to force people to participate in. We have no idea of what activity is occurring in our own app and it's very annoying.


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Kato Richardson

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May 30, 2019, 11:39:56 PM5/30/19
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Hm, that seems odd. I would guess this is a bug. Could you file it here with the details you shared above? 

Feel free to ping me the case id (found in the auto reply subject) if you need any help.

☼, Kato

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Ricky D'Amelio

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May 31, 2019, 11:06:22 AM5/31/19
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Thanks Kato.

Filed a brief report so far with the ID 1-2398000026805. Any urgency on this would be greatly appreciated, as it is causing significant reporting challenges.

Kato Richardson

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Jun 3, 2019, 12:05:21 PM6/3/19
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After looking over the internal discussion, it looks like these are the relevant threads. Recommend adding your findings and thoughts there. 


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