Analytics with Livecode.

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Kaubs
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Analytics with Livecode.

Post by Kaubs » Wed Oct 26, 2011 11:36 pm

Hello!

I wanted to share a project I am currently working on and see how the LiveCode community feels about it. I feel that what I am building could be a great value add to any project but decided iOS would be a great place to start. Does anyone have an interest in analytics tracking and or push notifications for an app?

I am writing a stack that could be installed as a substack to your mainstack where you would be able to track events such as app first launch, image uploads, any action really that you would like to see metrics on. The server side of this process is already built where you would have a console set up for each project and can track events live as they happen from your app users. This could be a great way to market to your users!

I would love some feedback to see if anyone is interested in such a thing. Also, please let me know if I am unclear or if I can answer any questions!

Thanks!
Kaubs

Kaubs
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Re: Analytics with Livecode.

Post by Kaubs » Fri Oct 28, 2011 11:25 pm

Just wanted to make sure I made everything clear. Anyone have questions?

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Re: Analytics with Livecode.

Post by townsend » Fri Oct 28, 2011 11:42 pm

Does this stack require a liveCode Server? IE: a revOnline.com account?
Could results be reported via email if no LC server is available?
Or maybe written to a mySQL or PostgreSQL table?

Kaubs
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Re: Analytics with Livecode.

Post by Kaubs » Sun Oct 30, 2011 8:08 am

It wouldn't require a rev server. Basically it would be a standalone substack that you could call from another substack. To be installed with your project more or less. It would use a server that is currently in production to show analytics data that you track based off of calling certain commands from another substack which track data. Make sense?

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Re: Analytics with Livecode.

Post by FourthWorld » Mon Oct 31, 2011 12:15 am

What sort of analytics are provided? The iOS SDK license is very restrictive, and Apple seems to be working very hard to make sure that developers have as little useful info about their customers as possible. This sort of thing would likely be very useful for Android, but I'd want to check the fine print of Apple's license before deciding whether to try to collect user data by any means other than the few Apple provides.
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Kaubs
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Re: Analytics with Livecode.

Post by Kaubs » Mon Oct 31, 2011 6:20 pm

We have a few apps on the market that have been approved by apple using this method. More or less events defined by the developer. When a person launches the app for the first time, when an image is uploaded, when a user registers an account for example. Pretty much anything you as the developer could want to track. The information you track is then accessible to you the developer or your client if you so please. It's not publicly available nor is it sold to anyone else, its your data. The stack I'm working on would certainly work for any LiveCode App.

Does this clear things up? I'm sorry I cannot go in to too much detail at the moment on the web end of things or what the UI will look like. Soon with interest I'm sure I could give some invites out to preview it if there is interest. As I said, it is currently in production, however we have not yet chosen to make it available for use outside of our company.

Please by all means feel free to ask more questions and as always I'll do my best to answer them.

trevix
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Re: Analytics with Livecode.

Post by trevix » Wed Mar 14, 2018 1:02 pm

Kaubs: what happened to your project?

Regards
Trevix
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Re: Analytics with Livecode.

Post by trevix » Thu Jan 02, 2020 5:22 pm

I think that it is pretty strange to be able to write mobile apps with LC and not to be able to use analytics tools for them.
Isn't it?

Unless you roll your own but it is quite complex.
I did try using FileMaker server and sending acquired data using POST and GET, but then I am not sure of how to use the little data I collected.
Can we expect some FireBase SDK (or similar) support in the future?

Trevix
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Re: Analytics with Livecode.

Post by FourthWorld » Thu Jan 02, 2020 6:58 pm

trevix wrote:
Thu Jan 02, 2020 5:22 pm
I think that it is pretty strange to be able to write mobile apps with LC and not to be able to use analytics tools for them.
Isn't it?
Maybe. What do you need, and what's preventing you from having it?
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Re: Analytics with Livecode.

Post by trevix » Thu Jan 02, 2020 9:06 pm

Strange answer, your. Unless you do it regularly and want to share.
Getting started with Analytics is easy. Just add the Firebase SDK to your new or existing app, and data collection begins automatically. You can view analytics data in the Firebase console within hours.
This is from https://firebase.google.com/docs/analytics/

How would I go in installing the Firebase SDK, given that I don't know other development language?
Any other analytic offer (I have looked into a lot of them) has a similar requirement: install an SDK for c++, Swift, Phyton, Java, etc.

LiveCloud has mentioned something about developing analytics using their own proposal, but I think they stopped development.
The subject of this same post goes back to 2011...

What do I don't understand?
No LC developer has the need to understand their user base?
LC home does not use analytics?

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Trevix
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Re: Analytics with Livecode.

Post by FourthWorld » Thu Jan 02, 2020 10:01 pm

trevix wrote:
Thu Jan 02, 2020 9:06 pm
Strange answer, your. Unless you do it regularly and want to share.
I don't understand. Why is the perceived relative strangeness of my question dependent on how much time I want to take from client work to write code for free?

The question itself seems straightforward: analytics is a deep, vast topic, nearly infinite. The scope of data that can be gathered from users is extremely varied, and the range of inquiries one may want to explore from slicing and dicing it even more so. It's not a checkbox, it's a body of literature and practice that spans hundreds of books and dozens of annual conferences.

In short, there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Hence my question.

Without knowing what you're after, being able to point to the best way to obtain it will be limited.
Getting started with Analytics is easy. Just add the Firebase SDK to your new or existing app, and data collection begins automatically. You can view analytics data in the Firebase console within hours.
This is from https://firebase.google.com/docs/analytics/
I love any sentence that begins with "just". Adding that one word makes whatever follows seem trivial. "Just fly to the moon." "Just cure cancer." "Just stop warfare." I love that word. :)

Looking briefly at that page, the "just add" part is but one of a long series of decisions you'll need to make as an app developer and marketer.

Consider this list of event properties as just one of several sets of data which can potentially be gathered: https://support.google.com/analytics/an ... ic=9267641

They include earn_virtual_currency, join_group, login, present_offer, purchase, refund, search, select_content, share, sign_up, spend_virtual_currency, tutorial_begin, tutorial_complete - which of those are relevant to your app?

Per those docs, once you decide which elements in your app express those values, you'll add code to hook into the APIs in the SDK that package that data up to send to the server.

Sending a package of data to a server is easy. Adding bits of code throughout your app less so.

If what you need is specifically the Google-branded Firebase Analytics SDK, you could wrap those APIs from LC Builder.

But there are many ways to gather data which are simpler, right in LC Script - depending on what that data is.

Collect it, post it.

In fact, there's a tremendous amount of data obtainable just from common HTTP requests on your server, a treasure trove that can be sliced and diced using any of the wide range of Apache log processing tools out there. Where custom processing of log data is needed, LC's chunk expressions make short work of tasks like that.

Many options. Vast. Nearly infinite.

Data science to learn user behavior is a rich opportunity. Defining your goals for that practice will help guide you toward the best fit for your needs.
How would I go in installing the Firebase SDK, given that I don't know other development language?
Any other analytic offer (I have looked into a lot of them) has a similar requirement: install an SDK for c++, Swift, Phyton, Java, etc.
Where SDKs are limited to interfaces in C++, Java, etc. LC Builder should be able to talk to them.
LiveCloud has mentioned something about developing analytics using their own proposal, but I think they stopped development.
The subject of this same post goes back to 2011...
I'm not familiar with LiveCloud's analytics, but I would doubt logging has been abandoned. The difference between logging and analyzing logs is not deep, so I'd guess it's merely still in development.
No LC developer has the need to understand their user base?
Given the size and diversity of the LiveCode audience, that suggestion seems unlikely.
LC home does not use analytics?
The source for LC's home page shows they use Google Analytics.
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Re: Analytics with Livecode.

Post by trevix » Fri Jan 03, 2020 12:54 pm

I don't understand. Why is the perceived relative strangeness of my question dependent on how much time I want to take from client work to write code for free?
Sorry, friendly talk...
Let me rephrase:
Strange answer, your. Unless you do it regularly (may be you want to share how you do it?)

For what I understand, any analytics SDK takes off the burden of collecting main events (open the app, close the app, update, time in page, etc), some of which are not available (disinstall the app) to custom LC scripting, save them, send them and display data in web pages, in readable manner. That's a big work if you try to implement it in LC. I know because I tried it. It is almost like writing your App twice.

As for LCB, beside the need to have a dent on those language (C++ etc), we all know that, as of now, it is in a transitional state: all examples and lessons are dated, referringe to OS, Xcode and LC versions no more used. Very confusing for someone willing to learn.

So, back to square one. Let me make a different example:
would someone create today a normal web site with an App that does not allow to simply paste the Google web analytics code in it? I don't think so.

Regards
Trevix
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Re: Analytics with Livecode.

Post by FourthWorld » Fri Jan 03, 2020 5:34 pm

trevix wrote:
Fri Jan 03, 2020 12:54 pm
As for LCB, beside the need to have a dent on those language (C++ etc), we all know that, as of now, it is in a transitional state: all examples and lessons are dated, referringe to OS, Xcode and LC versions no more used. Very confusing for someone willing to learn.
While it's true that the very first version of Builder (flagged as "experimental") was a learning process that did require revisions to some elements to arrive at the version used since. So thankfully, as with most technologies, while there may be changes from time to time they require fewer changes from LC devs than folks using other languages tolerate reqularly. With any documentation, the question is less about when it was written than about whether the information is currently useful.

What Builder code did you write in 2019 that no longer runs in 2020?
So, back to square one. Let me make a different example:
would someone create today a normal web site with an App that does not allow to simply paste the Google web analytics code in it? I don't think so.
Yes, many things about web development are simpler than native app development. If I wanted the graceful splendor of CSS FlexBox and Grid in a native app I'd be writing a hundred lines of code; in CSS it's a few property settings. Delivery to the customer is instantaneous on the web, with no app-store review process requiring delays of unpredictable length, and you get to keep all of your own money rather than reduce your business revenue by 30% just to be one of millions of uniform records in a database. Like a growing number of devs, in my office I'm increasingly considering web dev first, and native only when I encounter requirements that can't be met in the browser.

Analytics is just one more way they're such fundamentally different beasts, on nearly all levels, and you remind us of one more: the same vendor who provides copy-and-paste analytics for the web demands low-level implementation throughout a code base for native apps.

And we could also ask: how many business owners serious about understanding user behavior limit their understanding to page views?

There are many deeper options from a wide variety of vendors for monitoring in-site behavior, sufficient to produce even heat maps of mouse and touch activity. And all of that's just the lower part of the business funnel, near the very end of the customer journey; understanding the larger half of the journey requires monitoring data external to the site, from social media to web forums to news trends and more.

If all you want is the app equivalent of web page views, query your web server with two params in the GET: a UUID created on first-run, and the ordinal number of the card being opened. Apache takes care of the logging, and the range of tools for viewing logs in a dashboard is vast.

In fact, given that many apps populate their screens with data and/or media obtained from an HTTP server, odds are good that there's already a treasure trove of information at least as detailed as page views sitting on a server right now waiting to be viewed.

If you need the Google-branded implementation specifically, or one very similar to it, those vendors give you no choice but to accept their demand that you use C++ and Java interfaces, and thankfully LC Builder provides a way to do that in script.

There is no one-size-fits-all for understanding user behavior. It's not a checkbox. It's a set of decisions, in an ongoing and ever-evolving process, that will reflect the strategic goals of the business owner, and monitor as broadly as commitment to gaining that knowledge demands.
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Re: Analytics with Livecode.

Post by FourthWorld » Fri Jan 03, 2020 5:53 pm

FWIW, this is one of the most illuminating explorations I've ever read of methods for understanding customer behavior, prospects, and competitors:

Complete Web Monitoring
Watching your visitors, performance, communities, and competitors


By Alistair Croll, Sean Power
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Release Date: June 2009
Pages: 672
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596155148.do
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Re: Analytics with Livecode.

Post by trevix » Sat Jan 04, 2020 1:00 pm

I don't develop web App.
My most recent effort is a remote controlled sport scoring system; a simple LC standalone for iOS and Android.
For that I needed TextToSpeech, implement an already written C++ external library, have a user experience "analytics" to get feed back on its use.

None of which I have been able to implement so far.
Where SDKs are limited to interfaces in C++, Java, etc. LC Builder should be able to talk to them.
I spent several weeks trying to understand how to build extensions, use LCB FFI, old extensions like "rrenarrator" or "sunnytext2speech" that don't work anymore, "Extending Livecode", iOS Externals Guide.etc.
This is way over my knowledge and ability. Learning has been complicated by the referring to OS, xCODE and LC versions so old that nobody uses them anymore, with unrecognizable UI's.

You would say: things are complicated nowadays. You must learn.
Going back ten years ago tough, I embraced LC for its easy of use, assuming that I could always count on being able to buy and plug the basic tools that any developer should have, without having to develop them by my self.
And some sort of App analytics is one of them, in my opinion.
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