About using new session in AnalyticsClient

[AumJobs]

Before opening, please confirm:

• I have searched for duplicate or closed issues and discussions.

Language and Async Model

Kotlin

Amplify Categories

Analytics

Gradle script dependencies

dependencies {
    ...

    api ("com.amplifyframework:aws-analytics-pinpoint:2.14.13") {
        exclude( group = "androidx.lifecycle", module = "lifecycle-viewmodel-ktx")
    }
    api ("com.amplifyframework:aws-auth-cognito:2.14.13") {
        exclude( group = "androidx.lifecycle", module = "lifecycle-viewmodel-ktx")
    }

    ...
}

Environment information

------------------------------------------------------------
Gradle 8.1.1
------------------------------------------------------------

Build time:   2023-04-21 12:31:26 UTC
Revision:     1cf537a851c635c364a4214885f8b9798051175b

Kotlin:       1.8.10
Groovy:       3.0.15
Ant:          Apache Ant(TM) version 1.10.11 compiled on July 10 2021
JVM:          19.0.1 (Oracle Corporation 19.0.1+10-21)
OS:           Mac OS X 12.0.1 aarch64

Please include any relevant guides or documentation you're referencing

No response

Describe the feature request

When I did not initialize Amplify at the Application level,
AutoSessionTracker was behaving strangely.
This prevented sessions from being created and deleted properly.

After that, a new session was created every time we sent an event.
While trying to figure out what was causing this issue, I came across a suggestion in AnalyticsClient > createEvent.
In createEvent, if the session of sessionClient doesn't exist, we create a new Session and pass it over.
In this case, the newly created session is not stored in the sessionClient and seems to be created anew each time.
If this is not the intention, my suggestion would be to save the session to the sessionClient when it is newly created.
This would make the behavior a bit more understandable.
Thanks!

link

Initialization steps (if applicable)

No response

Code Snippet

// Put your code below this line.

amplifyconfiguration.json

No response

GraphQL Schema

// Put your schema below this line

Additional information and screenshots

No response

[joon-won]

Hi @AumJobs, our team member will take a look into the issue.

[yuhengshs]

Hi @AumJobs ,

Can you please elaborate the part where you said did not initialize Amplify at the Application level.
Does it mean that you initialized it else where? If so, where did you initialize Amplify at? Does the behavior change when you initialized Amplify in Application.onCreate?

Can you also provide some log information from LogCat with the tag AutoSessionTracker so that we will have a better picture on what will be the root cause.

Thank you!

[AumJobs]

Hi @yuhengshs

Due to the nature of the app service, we initialized when the first Amplify SDK reference occurs, not in Application.onCreate().
After the issue occurred,
Application.onCreate(), which seemed to resolve some of the issues.

However, my suggestion is that if the sessionClient's session is null, as shared as a link in the body, the current SDK logic for creating a new session does not update the sessionClient with this created session, hence my request for improvement.

It would be great if you could focus on the enhancement request to update the sessionClient when a new Session() is created.

Thank you !

[vincetran]

Hi @AumJobs, thanks for your patience. I took a look at the code you linked and I can kind of see where you're coming from but ultimately I think it may be a symptom of a different issue. Tracing through the code for AutoSessionTracker there shouldn't be a scenario where AnalyticsClient.createEvent(..) is called without an active session (where an active session is created via SessionClient.startSession())

If AutoSessionTracker is working properly, startSession should already be called automatically when the app comes into the foreground and that session should be persisted via SessionClient.

So when the app goes into the background, SessionClient.stopSession() should be called which should act explicitly on that persisted Session from above to call CreateEvent. If that session was null, AnalyticsClient.createEvent(..) would not even be called.

Can you do a further investigation from your side to track down what's causing your specific edge case as this is the first we've seen a report of this happening?