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I've been searching for many hours, but I havent been able to come up with a solution to the following problem:

I want to be able to test the implementation of Google Analytics in an app, in real real time. Using google real-time analytics is insufficient, because you sometimes have to wait several minutes for your new tag to show up.

A solution should be packet sniffing through Wireshark. I've attempted to do this, But even when I do find some analytics related calls, I cant seem to extract any useful information from them.(I have to admit, I dont know enough about networks to understand wireshark's features....)

Another solution should be using a proxy like Fiddler or Charles. I tried both, set up SSL, rooted an android phone to make sure all the traffic was using the proxy, but even then I'm not able to find any google analytics calls from my app.It seems like I'm looking in the wrong place or something, but for websites I do see these GA calls come by.

What am I doing wrong? It's so easy to find this stuff on web, and so far it has seemed impossible to get if from an app. Any help is appreciated.

PowerBI_Jaap
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By default Google Analytics uploads the hits data over SSL connection. It might be difficult for Wireshark to see inside the encrypted connection. The HTTP stack will likely check the certificates and refuse to talk to the wrong server as well. You can change the upload to non-SSL (plain HTTP) by calling tracker.setUserSecure(false):

https://developer.android.com/reference/com/google/android/gms/analytics/Tracker.html#setUseSecure(boolean)

That should allow you to see the uploads with Wireshark or any other packet analyzer. Make sure you don't ship your application with this setting.

The hits will also have some delay before they are uploaded over the network. If you are running on Google Play device (or emulator with Google Play Services) your hits will be dispatched by Google Play within few minutes. When running on non-Google Play devices (or emulator without Google Play Services) you can set the dispatch interval with googleAnalytics.setLocalDispatchPeriod(int seconds) call or explicitly trigger a dispatch with googleAnalytics.dispatchLocalHits()

djabi
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  • I have tried using this method and it no longer uses ssl.google. However, I am still having the problem that the payload cannot be read (using Charles as opposed to fiddler). – Clive Jefferies Jun 10 '15 at 12:29