CODEWITHSUNDEEP
firebasegoogle-cloud-functionsfirebase-analytics
Michael J
Michael J

Reputation: 825

Getting programmatic access to Firebase Analytics trending events

I have a mobile app which plays audio tracks. It uses Firebase Analytics to record events such as 'track names' played. Within the Firebase 'StreamView' one can access trending events and see which are the most popular tracks being played at any given moment. I would like to gain access to this list to and use it within my app to display a list of "tracks being played now".

I've looked into gaining access to Analytic trending event data and think Firebase Cloud Functions may provide a method of extracting the information I need. However, I'm not certain this is the correct, or easiest, method.

Could someone let me know whether extracting trending events is possible and, if so, point me in the correct direction?

Thanks

Upvotes: 0

Views: 378

Answers (1)

Sumit Chandel
Sumit Chandel

Reputation: 512

EDIT - Actually, there is a much better and easier way to get access to real-time events that have occurred in your app over the last 30 minutes. You can do so using the Google Analytics Data API.

Using the API you can filter through the event data for the past 30 mins, and inspect relevant custom dimensions on the play_track event for the track that was played (or provide a custom dimension filter to further specify the event data you get back).

This would be the ideal way to achieve what you're looking for. You might still want to use Cloud Firestore if you'd like to keep a longer record of trending tracks being played (e.g. in the last hour, last 24 hours, etc... though). Also note that the API is still in alpha.

-- END OF EDIT

Other Solutions

Option 1 - Use Cloud Firestore

This is probably the easiest solution - you can create a record of which tracks are being played whenever the event occurs by creating a simple collection in Cloud Firestore, and updating records for tracks being played there. It would require additional effort in logging and retrieving which tracks are played beyond just using Google Analytics, but should be straightforward to implement.

Note you'll probably want to check out the Firestore pricing guide first before selecting this option.

Option 2 - Using Firebase Cloud Functions

You can trigger a Cloud Function each time a play_track event is logged. The event will need to be marked as a conversion event in order for it to trigger a Cloud Function, and within the Cloud Function you can access the event parameters to identify which track is being played, and over time maintain a record somewhere for which tracks are being played to determine the most trending tracks. To maintain state you could use something like Firestore to keep track of which "tracks" are being played at the moment.

A couple of caveats about this approach:

  • You'll want to check out the Cloud Functions for Firebase pricing guide to make sure it falls within an acceptable range for your needs.
  • Cloud Functions triggers for analytics events currently only works for Android and iOS apps (no support for web apps).
  • Google Analytics triggers for Cloud Functions is currently in beta.

Option 3 - Using BigQuery for your analytics data

This option requires a bit more effort to setup, but you can export your Google Analytics data to BigQuery, and query the generated intraday tables to see which tracks are trending as well as a lot more additional insights.

The caveat with this approach are that you'll also need to check the pricing guide for using BigQuery to make sure it falls within your needs, and you'll need to make a call to execute the query and retrieve the list of tracks (or get a cached result).

Upvotes: 2

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