Mobile App Monitoring for Android (Kotlin)

Introduction

The ManageEngine Mobile APM Insight SDK for Android helps you monitor the performance and stability of your native Android applications on real user devices. It provides actionable insights into app behaviour and supports seamless integration with both Java and Kotlin applications.

What the SDK monitors

Gain deep insights into your application's health and performance:

• Application Crashes: Instantly detect and analyze both fatal and non-fatal crashes with detailed diagnostics.
• ANR (Application Not Responding) Events: Identify UI freezes and main-thread blocks that impact user experience.
• Network Request Performance: Track API response times, failures, and latency across different network conditions.
• Custom Transactions and Logs: Capture business-critical events for deeper troubleshooting.
• User Session Insights: Understand how real users interact with your app and isolate issues at the session level.

What you can achieve with the SDK

Once integrated, the SDK enables you to:

• Track Business Transactions: Measure the performance of key flows such as login, checkout, or onboarding.
• Monitor HTTP Calls Automatically: Detect slow APIs and backend bottlenecks before they impact users.
• Capture Crashes in Real Time: Proactively identify stability issues and resolve them faster.
• Track Screens and Fragments: Understand screen load times and user navigation patterns.
• Tag and Track Specific Users: Debug issues for individual users without guesswork.
• Separate Environments: Monitor production, staging, QA, and development builds independently.
• Exclude Specific Calls or Screens: Focus only on what matters by filtering out non-critical telemetry.
• Manually Flush Telemetry Data: Ensure immediate transmission of performance data when needed.

Prerequisites

Getting Started

Before you can add ManageEngine APM Insight Android SDK to your Android app, you need to create a Mobile App monitor and download the configuration (apm_config.json) file from the Applications Manager web.

• Create a new Android resource directory named raw inside the res directory (if it does not exist): app/src/main/res/raw/
• Place the downloaded configuration file into the raw folder without renaming or modifying its contents: app/src/main/res/raw/apm_config.json
• Adding Self-Signed Server Certificate (Not recommended for production environment): If your DEM Collector uses a self-signed (default bundled) SSL certificate, you must add the certificate to your Android project to make secure connection. To do so, copy the apm_cert.cer file from the DEM Collector-installed directory (/conf/sslcerts) and add it to the same raw folder: app/src/main/res/raw/apm_cert.cer
• Add the Mobile APM SDK to your app-level build.gradle (or build.gradle.kts) file.

  Groovy (build.gradle)

  dependencies {
      implementation "com.manageengine.apminsight:mobileapm:3.0.0"
  }

  Kotlin DSL (build.gradle.kts)

  dependencies {
      implementation("com.manageengine.apminsight:mobileapm:3.0.0")
  }

• Include the repo URL in the settings.gradle file.

  dependencyResolutionManagement {
      repositories {
      google()
      mavenCentral()
      maven {
          url = uri("https://maven.zohodl.com/")
          content {
              includeGroup("com.manageengine.apminsight")
          }
      }
  }
  }

Required Permissions: Ensure the following permission is added in AndroidManifest.xml file:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_WIFI_STATE" />

SDK Configuration & Instrumentation

1. Initializing the SDK

/**
* Initializes the ME APM Insight agent.
 * @param context The application context.
 */
class MyApplication : Application() {
    override fun onCreate() {
        super.onCreate()
        MEAPMInsight.initMonitoring( context = this )
   }
}

Note: If the SDK is initialized after application startup, pass an active Activity instance as the context to ensure immediate screen and lifecycle monitoring.

2. Enable crash reporting

The ManageEngine APM Insight SDK automatically captures all uncaught exceptions. Each crash report includes the timestamp of occurrence and the complete stack trace to assist in root cause analysis.

MEAPMInsight.enableErrorReporting()

3. Enable ANR monitoring

Detect Application Not Responding (ANR) events, situations where the main (UI) thread is blocked for too long, causing Android to show the "App isn't responding" dialog to the user. ANR monitoring must be enabled using the below API after the initMonitoring()

// Default timeout (5 seconds)
MEAPMInsight.startANRWatching()
// Custom timeout// Report ANR if the main thread is blocked for more than 3 seconds
MEAPMInsight.startANRWatching(3000)
//Stop ANR Monitoring
MEAPMInsight.stopANRWatching()
}

4. Enable fragment tracking

Option 1: Enable Globally

MEAPMInsight.enableFragmentSupport()

Option 2: Enable for specific activities only

If you want fragment tracking enabled only for certain activities, register the lifecycle callbacks manually inside those activities:

override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
    supportFragmentManager.registerFragmentLifecycleCallbacks(
        MEAPMInsightFragmentLifecycleCallbacks(),
        true
    )
}

5. Set environment

You can use the API below to set custom environment details for filtering data across various environment setups like development, debug, production, or release.

/**
   *@param {String} environment
        Custom environment types like debug, release, or beta release.
   */
MEAPMInsight.setEnvironment("release")

6. Set custom user ID

Associate telemetry with a specific user. The SDK automatically hashes the user ID (SHA-256) before storing or transmitting it. By default, a unique user ID is generated by the SDK. If you want to customize user IDs, you can do so by implementing the following syntax. This comes in handy when you want to track metrics or debug issues specific to a particular user.

Important Note: Do not pass raw Personally Identifiable Information (PII) such as email addresses, phone numbers, or real names. Use an opaque identifier like an internal user ID or UUID instead.

/**
   *@param {String} userId
   */
MEAPMInsight.setUserId("user_12345")

7. HTTP call tracking

The SDK automatically monitors network requests performed through the following libraries without additional configuration:

• java.net.HttpURLConnection
• javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection
• OkHttp (when the SDK interceptor is added)

  val client = OkHttpClient.Builder()
   .addNetworkInterceptor(MEAPMInsightInterceptor())
   .build()

If your application uses a custom networking layer or libraries that are not automatically monitored, you can manually track HTTP calls using the following API:

/**
 * @param {String} url
 * The complete request URL.
 *
 * @param {String} requestMethod
 * The HTTP method used (e.g., GET, POST, PUT, DELETE).
 *
 * @param {long} startTime
 * The request start time in milliseconds.
 * You can obtain this using System.currentTimeMillis().
 *
 * @param {long} loadTime
 * The total time taken to complete the request, measured in milliseconds.
 *
 * @param {int} responseCode
 * The HTTP response status code returned by the server.
 *
 * @param {String} screen
 * The name of the screen from which the HTTP call was initiated.
 */

Apm.addHttpCalls(
"https://www.example.com",
"GET",
System.currentTimeMillis(),
526,
200,
"PaymentScreen"
);

8. Screen tracking

By default, the SDK automatically captures all screens (Activities). If a screen is not detected automatically, you can manually track it using the API below:

/**
   *@param {String} screenName
   *@param {String} orientation
   *@param {long} loadTime measured in millis
   *@param {long} startTime measured in millis
   */
Apm.addScreen("DetailScreen", "portrait", 50, 1642743078700)

Business-level monitoring

1. Transactions

Start a transaction using Apm.startTransaction("Transaction_Name") before a long-running operation and call stop() when it completes.

Transactions are:

• Thread-safe: can be started and stopped across different threads.
• Single-use: each transaction instance can only be started and stopped once.
• Averaged by name: Transactions with the same name are grouped together.

When the same operation runs multiple times using the same transaction name, the SDK records the average execution time across those occurrences.

Use clear, consistent names to track business operations accurately.

val transaction = Apm.startTransaction("List Articles")

// Start predefined HTTP component
val httpComponent = transaction.startComponent(Component.TYPE_HTTP)

// Start custom component
val articlesComponent = transaction.startComponent("Download Articles")

// Download articles
transaction.stopComponent(articlesComponent)

for (article in articles) {
    val thumbnailComponent = transaction.startComponent("Download Thumbnail")
    
    // Download thumbnail
    
    transaction.stopComponent(thumbnailComponent)
}

// Stop HTTP component
transaction.stopComponent(httpComponent)

// Stop transaction
Apm.stopTransaction(transaction)

Advanced controls

1. Flush data

Use the API below to immediately upload the recorded telemetry data to the server instead of waiting for the next scheduled upload cycle. By default, the SDK uploads data at 60-second intervals.

MEAPMInsight.flush()

2. Exclude HTTP calls

Specific URLs can be excluded from tracking by passing a list of those URLs to the API below.

MEAPMInsightexcludeHttpCalls(listOf("example.com", "test.com"))

3. Exclude screens

Custom screens can be excluded from tracking by passing a list of screen names to the API below.

MEAPMInsight.excludeScreens(listOf("customScreenName"))

4. Stop monitoring

Use the API below to stop all data collection (screens, HTTP calls, transactions, crashes, ANR detection).

MEAPMInsight.stopMonitoring()

5. Mask sensitive data

The SDK automatically masks the values of known sensitive query parameters and headers, replacing them with ***** before any data is sent to the server. The following keys will be masked automatically:

• apikey, api_key, apitoken, api_token
• authorization, auth, token, access_token, refresh_token, auth_token, secret, client_secret
• username, user, email, password, passwd, pass
• sessionid, session_id, session_token

To add custom sensitive keys, use the API below:

MEAPMInsight.addSensitiveParams(listOf("x-custom-token", "account_id", "ssn"))

6. ProGuard / R8 Rules

If you use code obfuscation, add the following rules to your proguard-rules.pro file:

-keep class manageengine.mobileapm.android.apm.** { *; }
-dontwarn manageengine.mobileapm.android.apm.**