Question

I am working with the new Google Analytics Beta for Mobile. I am getting the following exception sometimes when I run my code:

E/AndroidRuntime(29101): java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to start
activity
ComponentInfo{com.wsoft/com.wsoft.ui.AppActivity}:
java.lang.IllegalStateException: You must call
EasyTracker.getInstance().setContext(context) or
startActivity(activity) before calling getTracker()
E/AndroidRuntime(29101): at
android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2059)
E/AndroidRuntime(29101): at
android.app.ActivityThread.handleLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2084)
E/AndroidRuntime(29101): at
android.app.ActivityThread.access$600(ActivityThread.java:130)
E/AndroidRuntime(29101): at
android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:1195)
E/AndroidRuntime(29101): at
android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99)
E/AndroidRuntime(29101): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:137)
E/AndroidRuntime(29101): at
android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4745)
E/AndroidRuntime(29101): at
java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method)
E/AndroidRuntime(29101): at
java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:511)
E/AndroidRuntime(29101): at
com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:786)
E/AndroidRuntime(29101): at
com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:553)
E/AndroidRuntime(29101): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native
Method) E/AndroidRuntime(29101):

Caused by:
java.lang.IllegalStateException: You must call
EasyTracker.getInstance().setContext(context) or
startActivity(activity) before calling getTracker()
E/AndroidRuntime(29101): at
com.google.analytics.tracking.android.EasyTracker.getTracker(EasyTracker.java:113)
E/AndroidRuntime(29101): at
com.wsoft.ui.AppActivity.setupApp(AppActivity.java:425)
E/AndroidRuntime(29101): at
com.wsoft.ui.AppActivity.onCreate(AppActivity.java:121)

To setup the analytics, I initialized the EasyTracker in the onStart() method (per documentation) like so:

public void onStart() {
        super.onStart();
        EasyTracker.getInstance().activityStart(this); 
    }

The IllegalStateException get’s thrown out of code, that is executing in my onCreate() method – which of course gets run before onStart() – so I understand why this is being thrown.

I am thinking of moving the EasyTracker initialization inside the onCreate(), instead of onStart().

Any reasons why I shouldn’t do this? Any suggestions on how to setup EasyTracker more reliable (in regards to Activity lifecycle? )

Or, if anyone has any good suggestions on how to ensure the EasyTracker is initialized before I use it (this causes a FC, which is obviously a bad thing.

Answer 1

Actually the docs say to initialize in onStart when you want to use Automatic Screen Tracking (EasyTracker), this is similar to the old V1 version of EasyTracker which did the same thing, but you would extend your class from a tracked version such as TrackedActivity.
But the docs do state that if you are doing any manual screen tracking, that you make sure to call setContext before calling something like trackEvent.
Docs are a little sparse with specifics on how to do this.
Anyway, I just created my own trackEvent, and trackView classes, that take a context as a parameter, to make sure it is always set.

public static void trackView(Context ctx, String sScreenName){
    EasyTracker.getInstance().setContext(ctx);
    EasyTracker.getTracker().trackView(sScreenName);

}
public static void trackEvent(Context ctx, String sCategory, String sAction, String sLabel, Long lOptVal){
    EasyTracker.getInstance().setContext(ctx);
    EasyTracker.getTracker().trackEvent(sCategory, sAction, sLabel, lOptVal);
}

solves the problem for me. Hope this helps.