Tracking user attributes

User attributes are specific traits of a user, like an email, username, mobile, gender, etc.
This information is helpful in order to target users based on these attributes across devices or installs.

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Default & Predefined User Attributes

We track certain user attributes by default in our SDK, and also we have predefined attribute names for certain common user info tracked by these SDK methods. Make sure to use these and not track the same info with the different attribute names. Find the list of default and predefined user attributes tracked by SDK here.

User Login / Logout

It is important that you handle user login and logout as mentioned below. There is a definite possibility that your data gets corrupted if this is not done properly.

  • Make sure to get hold of a unique id for your app users and pass that information to our SDK using the setUniqueID(_:) method. We use this unique id to identify a user and also to merge user profiles across installs and platforms.
  • And also, once the user logs out of your app, it is necessary to call resetUser() of SDK so that we create a new anonymous user and track the events following this to the new user's profile.

Kindly ensure you call the following methods on user login/logout.

Login

Swift Objective-C
MoEngageSDKAnalytics.sharedInstance.setUniqueID(UNIQUE_ID) // UNIQUE_ID is used to uniquely identify a user.

Note: The following values are not allowed in the UniqueID field: "unknown", "guest", "null", "0", "1", "true", "false", "user_attribute_unique_id", "(empty)", "na", "n/a", "", "dummy_seller_code", "user_id", "id", "customer_id", "uid", "userid", "none", "-2", "-1", "2"

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UNIQUE ID chaos

  • When you go live with MoEngage iOS SDK for the first time, please ensure that you are setting the Unique ID of the already logged-in user along with other user attributes.
  • Kindly make sure that you are not using a single unique id for all the users, this can happen if you hard code the value, instead of fetching it from your servers.
  • If you pass 2 different unique id information without calling resetUser() method in between, the SDK will internally force logout the existing user.

Logout

Swift Objective-C
MoEngageSDKAnalytics.sharedInstance.resetUser()

Updating User Attribute Unique ID

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Important

Please make sure that you use setAlias(_:) for updating the User Attribute Unique ID and not setUniqueID(_:) as calling setUniqueID(_:) with a new value will reset the current user and lead to the creation of unintended users in our system.

In a scenario where you have to update the existing user's Unique ID value make use of setAlias(_:) method as shown below with the updated Unique ID value:

Swift Objective-C
MoEngageSDKAnalytics.sharedInstance.setAlias(UPDATED_UNIQUE_ID)

Default User Attributes

Some default SDK User Attribute can be set for eg. email-id, mobile number, gender, user name, birthday. The default attributes tracked by SDK can be set as shown below :

Swift Objective-C
MoEngageSDKAnalytics.sharedInstance.setName(userName)
MoEngageSDKAnalytics.sharedInstance.setLastName(userLastname)
MoEngageSDKAnalytics.sharedInstance.setFirstName(userFirstName)
MoEngageSDKAnalytics.sharedInstance.setEmailID(userEmailID)
MoEngageSDKAnalytics.sharedInstance.setMobileNumber(userPhoneNo)
MoEngageSDKAnalytics.sharedInstance.setGender(.male) //Use UserGender enumerator for this
MoEngageSDKAnalytics.sharedInstance.setDateOfBirth(userBirthdate)//userBirthdate should be a Date instance
MoEngageSDKAnalytics.sharedInstance.setLocation(MoEngageGeoLocation(withLatitude: userLocationLat, andLongitude: userLocationLng)) //userLocationLat and userLocationLng are double values of the location coordinates
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Note

  • We support strings and numbers as values for UserAttributes. NSURL is not supported. If you wish to use it, please convert them to string.
  • User Phone No / Mobile Number must be tracked as a string to work properly in MoEngage systems.
  • For more information on supported data types and data tracking policies, please refer to Data Tracking Policies.

Custom User Attributes

To set custom attributes just provide custom keys different to the ones present in here. Following is an example :

Swift Objective-C
MoEngageSDKAnalytics.sharedInstance.setUserAttribute("Bengaluru", withAttributeName: "Current_city")
MoEngageSDKAnalytics.sharedInstance.setUserAttribute(["Bengaluru","Delhi","Chennai"], withAttributeName: "Current_cities")

User Attributes have the following restrictions :

  • User Attribute Names should not contain dot(.)
  • User Attribute Names should not start with dollar sign($)
  • User Attribute Values should be a String or Number
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Note

You can not use "moe_" as a prefix while naming events, event attributes, or user attributes. It is a system prefix and using it might result in periodic blacklisting without prior communication.

JSON Attributes

From MoEngage-iOS-SDK v9.17.5, we have added support for JSON and array of JSON user attributes. Following is an example

Swift Objective-C
MoEngageSDKAnalytics.sharedInstance.setUserAttribute(["item-id" : 123,"item-type" : "books","item-cost" : ["amount" : 100,"currency" : "USD"]],withAttributeName: "product")

MoEngageSDKAnalytics.sharedInstance.setUserAttribute([["item-id" : 123,"item-cost" : ["amount" : 100,"currency" : "USD"]],["item-id" : 323,"item-cost" : ["amount" : 90,"currency" : "USD"]]],withAttributeName: "products")

Date and Time User Attributes

Date and time attributes can be set as user attributes. For this refer to the methods in the code block below:

Swift Objective-C
//1. Track UserAttribute using Date instance
MoEngageSDKAnalytics.sharedInstance.setUserAttributeDate(Date(), withAttributeName: "Date Attr 1")

//2. Track UserAttribute using ISO Date String in format "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss'Z'"
MoEngageSDKAnalytics.sharedInstance.setUserAttributeISODate("2020-01-12T18:45:59Z", withAttributeName: "Date Attr 2")

//3. Track UserAttribute using Epoch value
MoEngageSDKAnalytics.sharedInstance.setUserAttributeEpochTime(663333, withAttributeName: "Date Attr 3")

Location Attributes

The location of a user or any location can be set as a user attribute. For this use setLocation(_:withAttributeName:) method and pass lat, the long value of the location as shown in the following example :

Swift Objective-C
MoEngageSDKAnalytics.sharedInstance.setLocation(MoEngageGeoLocation.init(withLatitude: 72.90909, andLongitude: 12.34567), withAttributeName: "attribute name")

Tracking User Locale

For tracking the locale settings of the user device use trackLocale() method as shown below:

Swift Objective-C
MoEngageSDKAnalytics.sharedInstance.trackLocale()

Reserved keywords for User Attributes

Below is the list of keys that should not be used when tracking user attributes.

  • USER_ATTRIBUTE_UNIQUE_ID
  • USER_ATTRIBUTE_USER_EMAIL
  • USER_ATTRIBUTE_USER_MOBILE
  • USER_ATTRIBUTE_USER_NAME
  • USER_ATTRIBUTE_USER_GENDER
  • USER_ATTRIBUTE_USER_FIRST_NAME
  • USER_ATTRIBUTE_USER_LAST_NAME
  • USER_ATTRIBUTE_USER_BDAY
  • MOE_TIME_FORMAT
  • MOE_TIME_TIMEZONE
  • USER_ATTRIBUTE_NOTIFICATION_PREF
  • USER_ATTRIBUTE_OLD_ID
  • MOE_TIME_FORMAT
  • MOE_TIME_TIMEZONE
  • USER_ATTRIBUTE_DND_START_TIME
  • USER_ATTRIBUTE_DND_END_TIME
  • MOE_GAID
  • MOE_ISLAT
  • status

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