Error Analysis

Tracking will start at the 1st screenview event, it is required to have screen tracking implemented. Make sure to follow the iOS Track screens sections.

If you are in the process of implementing the SDK for the 1st time (or choose to take this update as an opportunity to review your Privacy related implementation), make sure to follow the iOS Privacy section and use the Opt-in API to get the user consent, otherwise no data will be collected.

API errors automatically collects failed network requests that use URLSession.

Automatic collection can be disabled by setting CSDisableAPIErrorsAutoCollection to YES in the Info.plist.

The API errors automatically collects most network requests for your app. However, some requests might not be collected or you might use a different library to make network requests. In these cases, you can use the following API HTTPMetric to manually collect data.

guard let url = URL(string: "https://www.apple.com") else { return }
let request: URLRequest = URLRequest(url: url)
let metric = HTTPMetric(request: request)
let session = URLSession(configuration: .default)
let dataTask = session.dataTask(with: request) { (urlData, response, error) in
    if let httpResponse = response as? HTTPURLResponse {
        metric.setStatusCode(httpResponse.statusCode)
    }
    metric.stop()
}
dataTask.resume()

NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:@"https://www.apple.com"];
NSURLRequest *request = [[NSURLRequest alloc]initWithURL:url];
HTTPMetric *metric = [[HTTPMetric alloc]initWithRequest:request];
NSURLSession *session = [NSURLSession sessionWithConfiguration:NSURLSessionConfiguration.defaultSessionConfiguration];
NSURLSessionDataTask *task = [session dataTaskWithRequest:request completionHandler:^(NSData *data, NSURLResponse *response, NSError *error) {
    NSHTTPURLResponse *httpResponse = (NSHTTPURLResponse *) response;
    [metric setStatusCode:httpResponse.statusCode];
    [metric stop];
}];
[task resume];

By default, the API Errors feature collects the URL path of the failed API requests. To prevent the collection of Personal Data in the URL path, you can rewrite the request URL path with the setURLMaskingPatterns SDK API.

/// This API must called at App launch.
public static func setURLMaskingPatterns(_ patterns: [String])

Replace a step of the path - meaning between two slashes (/) - containing Personal Data with a variable:

• :user_id becomes CS_ANONYMIZED_USER_ID
• :address becomes CS_ANONYMIZED_ADDRESS

ErrorAnalysis.setURLMaskingPatterns([
    "https://www.contentsquare.com/users/:user_id/address/:address"
])

If in-app features are enabled, a log should appear indicating if API errors is enabled or disabled:

CSLIB ℹ️ Info: API Errors is enabled

If you have logging enabled, you will see API errors:

• Displayed in Contentsquare Log Visualizer.
• As an Info log:

CSLIB ℹ️ Info: API Error - GET 401 https://api.client.com

The way our SDK works is by auto-starting with the application launch and automatically collects failed network requests that use URLSession.

Once started, our SDK fetches its config from our servers. It will start collecting data from network events if the API errors setting is enabled in the config (this is handled by the Contentsquare team).

The SDK monitors only the API errors with response code equal or above 400, and generates analytics data. These events are then locally stored, and eventually sent to our servers in batches.

For each network error, a new event will be sent in analytics and Session Replay data. Check the following sections to learn more about how data is processed and sent:

• Analytics requests
• Session Replay requests

API errors troubleshooting details enables you to collect more information about API errors so you can troubleshoot errors faster.

With this feature you will be able to see three types of additional API error details in the Event Stream of Session Replay.

• The HTTP headers of the request and the response.
• The body (the data sent by the request or received in the response).
• The query parameters of the request endpoint (of the URL of the information you request for).

See API Troubleshooting Details ↗ for more details.

Only network calls with error (response code above 400) will be collected. Here is the list of data collected:

• URL (without query strings)
• HTTP method
• Response code
• Timestamp of the request
• Timestamp of the response
• HTTP headers of the request
• HTTP headers of the response
• HTTP body of the request
• HTTP body of the response
• Query parameters of the request endpoint

The auto collection doesn’t work for the following methods:

func data(for request: URLRequest) async throws -> (Data, URLResponse)
func data(from url: URL) async throws -> (Data, URLResponse)
func upload(for request: URLRequest, from bodyData: Data) async throws -> (Data, URLResponse)
func upload(for request: URLRequest, fromFile fileURL: URL) async throws -> (Data, URLResponse)
func download(for request: URLRequest) async throws -> (URL, URLResponse)
func download(from url: URL) async throws -> (URL, URLResponse)

func downloadTask(withResumeData: Data) -> URLSessionDownloadTask
func downloadTask(withResumeData: Data, completionHandler: (URL?, URLResponse?, Error?) -> Void) -> URLSessionDownloadTask

func streamTask(withHostName: String, port: Int) -> URLSessionStreamTask
func streamTask(with: NetService) -> URLSessionStreamTask

func webSocketTask(with: URL) -> URLSessionWebSocketTask
func webSocketTask(with: URLRequest) -> URLSessionWebSocketTask
func webSocketTask(with: URL, protocols: [String]) -> URLSessionWebSocketTask

Workaround: For the async methods, use the corresponding Contentsquare methods:

try await URLSession.shared.cs.data(for: request)
try await URLSession.shared.cs.data(from: url)
try await URLSession.shared.cs.upload(for: request, from: data)
try await URLSession.shared.cs.upload(for: request, fromFile: file)
try await URLSession.shared.cs.download(for: request)
try await URLSession.shared.cs.download(from: url)

For other methods, use the custom monitoring APIs.

API errors is compatible with Firebase Performance auto-collection, but the HTTP body from the response won’t be collected by the Error Analysis SDK.

Workaround: Disable auto collection and use API HTTPMetric to manually collect data.

It may also not be compatible with other network auto collection tools.

Based on our test, the Contentsquare Crash Reporter is compatible with Firebase Crashlytics as long as the Contentsquare Crash Reporter is initialized first, otherwise some crashes can be missing in Crashlytics.

You can use this API to launch Firebase Crashlytics after Contentsquare Crash Reporter

ErrorAnalysis.onCrashReporterStart { _ in
    FirebaseApp.configure()
}

[ErrorAnalysis onCrashReporterStart:^(BOOL _) {
    [FIRApp configure];
}];

“When Xcode compiles your source code into machine code, it generates a list of symbols in your app — class names, global variables, and method and function names. These symbols correspond to the file and line numbers where they’re defined; this association creates a debug symbol” See Apple’s documentation for more details ↗.

When an app crashes, the operating system collects diagnostic information about what the app was doing at the time of crash. Some of the most important parts of the crash report are presented as hexadecimal addresses. To translate those addresses into readable function names and line numbers from your source code, a process called symbolication is used. See Apple’s documentation for more details ↗.

In order to symbolicate the crashes reported by a specific version of your app and make them readable, you need to provide the symbol files (dSYMs) that were generated when your app was built.

Make sure Xcode is generating dSYMs for your app:

1. Open your project in Xcode.
2. Select the project file in the Xcode Navigator.
3. Select your main target.
4. Select the Build Settings tab and click All to show all the build settings.
5. Filter by Debug Information Format.
6. Set Debug Information Format to DWARF with dSYM File for all the build types you want to generate dSYMs.
7. Rebuild your main target.

If you build your main target using bitcode (Bitcode Enabled turned on in build settings) and you uploaded your app’s symbols to the App Store, you need to download the dSYMs from the App Store:

1. Log in to App Store Connect ↗, then select My Apps.
2. Select your app from the grid.
3. Select the build you want to download a dSYM for.
4. Click Build Details > Download dSYM.

In case you use bitcode to build your main target but you didn’t upload your dSYMs to the App Store, you need to find your dSYMs on your local machine and restore hidden symbols using the BCSymbolMaps Xcode generates.

You can find the dSYMs in the .xcarchive directory on disk:

1. In Xcode, open the Organizer window (Window -> Organizer).
2. Select your app from the list.
3. Control-click an archive and select Show in Finder.
4. A Finder window should appear. Control-click the xcarchive package and select Show Package Contents.
5. There should be a dSYMs directory that contains the dSYMs generated in Xcode’s archiving process. If you use the Download Debug Symbols option from Xcode’s organizer, the recompiled bitcode dSYMs are also downloaded to this directory.

Restoring hidden symbols using BCSymbolMaps is only required if you built your main target using bitcode (Bitcode Enabled turned on in build settings). If you used bitcode but downloaded the dSYMs from the App Store, the dSYMs will be recompiled and you can skip this step.

To restore hidden symbols you can run the following command:

dsymutil -symbol-map /path/to/archive/BCSymbolMaps /path/to/dsym.dSYM

1. Login to the Contentsquare platform on https://app.contentsquare.com ↗
2. Make sure to be on the right project
3. The project ID can be found in the URL query parameter project: https://app.contentsquare.com/#/{MODULE_NAME}?project={PROJECT_ID}&hash={HASH}]

Follow the dedicated documentation from the Help Center to get the client ID and client Secret: How to create API credentials ↗.

To upload dSYMs to Error Analysis you need to use the provided upload-symbols script. You need to provide the path where the dSYM files are located as a positional argument, and the Project ID, Client ID and Client Secret either as keyword arguments or set them as environment variables.

If both are provided, the keyword arguments will prevail over the environment variables.

The following steps describe how to configure Xcode to automatically upload your dSYMs whenever you build your app.

1. Open your project’s Xcode workspace, then select its project file in the left Project navigator.
2. From the TARGETS list, select your main build target.
3. Click the Build Phases tab, then complete the following steps so that Xcode can process your dSYMs and upload the files.
   1. Click + > New Run Script Phase. Make sure this new Run Script phase is your project’s last build phase; otherwise, dSYMs might not be ready.
   2. Expand the new Run Script section.
   3. In the script field (located under the Shell label), add the following run script.

# Only upload symbols for App Store build.
# Replace `Release` with the configuration used when uploading to the App Store.
if [ "${CONFIGURATION}" != "Release" ]; then
exit 0
fi
${BUILD_DIR%Build/*}SourcePackages/checkouts/CS_iOS_SDK/scripts/upload-symbols ${DWARF_DSYM_FOLDER_PATH} --project-id <project-id> --client-id <client-id> --client-secret <client-secret>

# Only upload symbols for App Store build.
# Replace `Release` with the configuration used when uploading to the App Store.
if [ "${CONFIGURATION}" != "Release" ]; then
  exit 0
fi
${SRCROOT}/upload-symbols ${DWARF_DSYM_FOLDER_PATH} --project-id <project-id> --client-id <client-id> --client-secret <client-secret>

In the Input Files section, make sure you have the paths for the locations of the following files:

${DWARF_DSYM_FOLDER_PATH}/${DWARF_DSYM_FILE_NAME}

${DWARF_DSYM_FOLDER_PATH}/${DWARF_DSYM_FILE_NAME}/Contents/Resources/DWARF/${PRODUCT_NAME}

${DWARF_DSYM_FOLDER_PATH}/${DWARF_DSYM_FILE_NAME}/Contents/Info.plist

$(TARGET_BUILD_DIR)/$(EXECUTABLE_PATH)

Make sure User Script Sandboxing is set to NO in Xcode Build Settings. if you don’t want to disabled it, you need to add the paths of all your dSYMs files one by one in Input Files.

The instructions require fastlane 1.93.0 or later.

1. Add fastlane plugin to your project:
   1. Run fastlane add_plugin fastlane-plugin-contentsquare.
   2. Select Git URL and input https://github.com/ContentSquare/contentsquare-fastlane-plugin.git ↗. See fastlane Plugins ↗ for more information.
2. Call fastlane plugin in your build process: upload_symbols_to_error_analysis(project_id: your_project_id, client_id: "your_client_id", client_secret: "your_client_secret")

Enabling crash reporting will conflict with any attached debuggers, so make sure a debugger isn’t attached when you crash the app. In case a debugger is attached to the device, Crash Reporter won’t be initialized and a log will be printed in the console:

CSLIB ℹ️ Info: Debugger present, crash reporter is not initialized

To test if Crash Reporter is working properly, you first need to disconnect your test device or simulator from Xcode debugger:

• Tap on the Edit scheme… option of your current scheme
• Disable the Debug executable option in your scheme configuration.
• Build and run your current scheme.

If Crash Reporter is successfully initialized when you launch your application, you should see a log printed in the console:

CSLIB ℹ️ Info: Crash reporter is initialized

Alternatively, you can detach your application from Xcode debugger by stopping it after is launched. This way Crash Reporter will be initialized and will start reporting crashes, but you won’t be able to see the logs printed in the console:

• Build and run your current scheme.
• Wait until the app is up and running.
• Click on Stop running the scheme.
• Open the app directly from your test device or simulator.

Run your application and force a crash (you can do it by adding a fatalError() in your code). Launch the application again using Xcode and you should see a log printed in the console that indicates that a crash has been detected and sent:

CSLIB ℹ️ Info: Crash event detected and sent for userID: <user-id>, session: <session-number> on screen: <screen-number> - crashID: <crash-id>

Crash Reporter is started automatically and begins to report crashes when your application is launched.

Once started, our SDK fetches its configuration from our servers. It will start reporting crashes if the Crash Reporter setting is enabled (this is handled by the Contentsquare team).

When a crash occurs, a report is created and stored locally in the device. Once the app is launched again, the report is sent to our servers and then removed from the local storage.

For each crash, a new event will be sent to analytics and Session Replay data when the app is launched again after the crash occurred and the network conditions allow for the server to be reached.

Our requests use lowPriority ↗.

Crash Reporter handles multiple types of crashes, including:

• Mach kernel exceptions
• Fatal signals
• C++ exceptions
• Objective-C exceptions

For each crash we collect information of the application, system, process, threads, stack traces and some other events metadata you can find in collected data points.

Beyond Firebase Crashlytics (see Setup Firebase Crashlytics compatibility mode), the Contentsquare Crash Reporter is not compatible with other crash reporters. For more details, reach out to your Contentsquare contact.

Errors occurring in web pages loaded in WebViews can be collected if Webview tracking is setup in your app.

See 📚 Webview Tracking implementation.

Once WebView tracking is implemented, errors collection can be set up.

See 📚 Errors (in WebView)

We always strive to be non-intrusive, and transparent to the developers of the client app. We apply this rule on the performance as well. These are the technical specifics we can share on performance, if you have any questions feel free to reach out to us.

The following performance results were obtained under the following conditions:

Until version 4.28.0 of the Contentsquare SDK, the Error Analysis add-on was provided as a distinct artifact. To integrate it into your application, a dedicated XCFramework dependency was required and could be installed through SPM/Cocoapods/Carthage or manually. Starting from version 4.29.0, this is no longer the case as Error Analysis is included in main package.

If you had previously integrated the Error Analysis module into your application, you will need to remove it from your dependencies. Depending on how you integrated Error Analysis you can follow the instructions below:

// Remove one of the following line from your Podfile
pod 'CS_ErrorAnalysis'
pod 'CS_ErrorAnalysis_STATIC'

binary "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ContentSquare/CS_iOS_SDK/master/carthage/ContentsquareErrorAnalysisModule.json"
github "ContentSquare/CS_iOS_CrashReporter" ~> 0.0.3

Once done you can remove all the import ContentsquareErrorAnalysisModule in the source code of your app.