Facebook App Events is Facebook's event tracking functionality. It lets you track events via your app or web page, including user activities such as app installation, purchases, etc. This information is sent to Facebook for analytics and ad targeting, optimization, and measurement.
RudderStack supports Facebook App Events as a destination to which you can send your event data seamlessly.
Getting started
To enable sending data to Facebook App Events, you will first need to add it as a destination in RudderStack. Once the destination is configured and enabled, events from RudderStack will start flowing to App Events.
Before configuring App Events as a destination, verify if Facebook supports the source platform by referring to the table below:
Connection Mode | Web | Mobile | Server |
---|---|---|---|
Device mode | - | Supported | - |
Cloud mode | Supported | Supported | - |
Once you have confirmed that the source supports sending events to Facebook App Events, follow these steps:
- From your RudderStack dashboard, add the source. From the list of destinations, select Facebook App Events.
- Assign a name to the destination and click on Next. You should then see the following screen:
Connection settings
The connection settings required to configure App Events as a destination in RudderStack are listed below:
- Enter the Facebook App ID.
The following options are applicable if you are using the Device mode to send your events to Facebook:
- Limited Data Use: If this option is enabled, you can send the country and state of the end-user so that Facebook processes the user data according to the data regulations set for that region.
- Click on Next to complete the configuration.
That's it! Facebook App Events should now be added and enabled as a destination in RudderStack.
Adding Facebook App Events to Your Project
Depending on your platform of integration, follow these steps below to add App Events to your project:
- Add the following line to your CocoaPods
Podfile
:pod 'Rudder-Facebook' - Initialize the Facebook App Events iOS SDK just before intializing the RudderStack iOS SDK as shown:[[FBSDKApplicationDelegate sharedInstance] application:applicationdidFinishLaunchingWithOptions:launchOptions];
- Send the user's consent to App Events as shown below:
- For Objective-C:// Set AdvertiserTrackingEnabled to YES if a user provides consent[FBSDKSettings setAdvertiserTrackingEnabled:YES];// Set AdvertiserTrackingEnabled to NO if a user does not provide consent[FBSDKSettings setAdvertiserTrackingEnabled:NO];
- For Swift:// Set AdvertiserTrackingEnabled to true if a user provides consentSettings.setAdvertiserTrackingEnabled(true)// Set AdvertiserTrackingEnabled to false if a user does not provide consentSettings.setAdvertiserTrackingEnabled(false)
- For Objective-C:
- Configure your project by adding the following lines to
(
in your... )Info.plist
:<key>CFBundleURLTypes</key><array><dict><key>CFBundleURLSchemes</key><array><string>fbAPP-ID</string></array></dict></array><key>FacebookAppID</key><string>APP-ID</string><key>FacebookClientToken</key><string>CLIENT-TOKEN</string><key>FacebookDisplayName</key><string>APP-NAME</string>Make sure you replace
fbAPP-ID
,APP-ID
,CLIENT-TOKEN
,APP-NAME
with the app-specific details from the Facebook for Developers platform. - After adding the dependency, register the
RudderFacebookFactory
with yourRudderClient
initialization as afactory
ofRudderConfig
. To do this, run the following command to import theRudderFacebookFactory.h
file in yourAppDelegate.m
file:#import <Rudder-Facebook/RudderFacebookFactory.h> - Then, add the RudderStack iOS SDK initialization as shown:RSConfigBuilder *builder = [[RSConfigBuilder alloc] init];[builder withDataPlaneUrl:DATA_PLANE_URL];[builder withFactory:[RudderFacebookFactory instance]];[RSClient getInstance:WRITE_KEY config:[builder build]];
- Add the repository, as shown:repositories {mavenCentral()}
- Add the following lines to your
app/build.gradle
file under thedependencies
section, as shown:implementation 'com.rudderstack.android.sdk:core:1.+'implementation 'com.rudderstack.android.integration:facebook:1.0.0'implementation 'com.facebook.android:facebook-android-sdk:11.1.0' - Open your
/app/res/values/strings.xml
file and add the following lines. **Remember to replace[APP_ID]
with your actual app ID**.<string name="facebook_app_id">[APP_ID]</string><string name="fb_login_protocol_scheme">fb[APP_ID]</string> - In the
app/manifests/AndroidManifest.xml
file, add ameta-data
element to theapplication
element as shown: - Finally, change the initialization of your
RudderClient
in yourApplication
class, as shown:val rudderClient = RudderClient.getInstance(this,WRITE_KEY,RudderConfig.Builder().withDataPlaneUrl(DATA_PLANE_URL).withFactory(FacebookIntegrationFactory.FACTORY).build())
Identify
identify
calls only in the mobile device mode.The identify
call from RudderStack sets the userId
through the setUserID
method from AppEventsLogger
.
RudderStack sets the following properties (if available) using the setUserData
method.
email
firstName
lastName
phone
birthday
gender
city
state
zip
country
A sample identify
call for an iOS application is shown below:
[[RSClient sharedInstance] identify:@"developer_user_id" traits:@{@"email": @"bar@foo.com"}];
Track
The track
call from RudderStack is logged to Facebook using the logEvent
method of the AppEventsLogger
class. RudderStack uses the same eventName
as you have passed to the track
method. Along with that, it will pass all the properties
after converting them into an accepted format.
A sample track
call for an iOS application is as shown:.
[[RSClient sharedInstance] track:@"Accepted Terms of Service" properties:@{ @"foo": @"bar", @"foo_int": @134 }];
When revenue
and currency
are present in the event properties of any track
call, RudderStack makes a Purchase
call to Facebook using its logPurchase
API along with the normal track
call using the logEvent
API.
If currency
is absent in the event properties RudderStack sets the default value to USD
.
Page
The page
method lets you record your website's page views with any additional relevant information about the viewed page. You need not pass the event name as RudderStack automatically sets it to Viewed Page
.
A sample page
call using the RudderStack Android SDK is as shown:
rudderanalytics.page();
The page
call is directly passed on to Facebook as a track
event via its logEvent
API, with the event name as Viewed Page
along with the the associated properties.
Screen
The screen
method lets you record your users' screen views on their devices, along with any associated properties. This call is similar to the page
call, but is exclusive to your mobile device.
A sample screen
call using the RudderStack Android SDK is as shown:
[[RSClient sharedInstance] screen:@"Home" properties:@{ @"category" : @"launcher"}];
In the above snippet, RudderStack captures the information related to the viewed screen, such as screen name and category
.
The above screen
call is directly passed on to Facebook as a track
event via its logEvent
API, with the event name as Viewed {screen name} screen
along with the the associated properties. The above example will be sent as a track
event with name Viewed Home screen
along with its properties.
Limited Data Use
In July 2020, Facebook released a Limited Data Use feature to give businesses better control over how their data is used in their California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) compliance efforts.
You can now send the Limited Data Use data processing parameters to Facebook for each event via RudderStack, so that Facebook can appropriately apply the user’s data choice.
To use this feature, simply enable the Limited Data Use setting on the RudderStack dashboard and control its behavior via the following data processing parameters:
Parameter | Default Value | Description |
---|---|---|
Data Processing Options State | 0 | Use Facebook’s geolocation to determine the end-user's state. |
Data Processing Options Country | 0 | Use Facebook’s geolocation to determine the end-user's country. |
Learn more about the different data processing options accepted by Facebook here.
Configuring Facebook App Events SDK Based on User Consent
This section highlights the different consent-based options for configuring the App Events SDK.
Disable Automatically Logged Events
- To disable automatic event logging, open the application's
.plist
as code in Xcode and add the following XML to the property dictionary:<key>FacebookAutoLogAppEventsEnabled</key><false/> - In some cases, you can delay the collection of automatically logged events to obtain user consent or fulfill legal obligations instead of disabling it entirely. To do so, call the
setAutoLogAppEventsEnabled
method of theFBSDKSettings
class to re-enable auto-logging after the end-user provides the required consent.- In Objective-C:[FBSDKSettings setAutoLogAppEventsEnabled:YES];
- In Swift:FBSDKSettings.setAutoLogAppEventsEnabled(true)
- In Objective-C:
- To suspend event collection for any reason, set the
setAutoLogAppEventsEnabled
method toNO
for iOS orfalse
for Swift, as shown:- In Objective-C:[FBSDKSettings setAutoLogAppEventsEnabled:NO];
- In Swift:FBSDKSettings.setAutoLogAppEventsEnabled(false)
- In Objective-C:
- To disable automatically logged events, add the following to your
AndroidManifest.xml
file: - In some cases, you can delay the collection of automatically logged events to obtain user consent or fulfill legal obligations instead of disabling it entirely. To do so, call the
setAutoLogAppEventsEnabled()
method of theFacebookSDK
class and set it totrue
. This re-enables event logging after the end-user has provided the required consent.setAutoLogAppEventsEnabled(true); - To suspend event logging again for any reason, set the
setAutoLogAppEventsEnabled()
method tofalse
, as shown:setAutoLogAppEventsEnabled(false);
Disable Collection of Advertiser IDs
- To disable the collection of advertiser ID, open the application's
.plist
as code in Xcode and add the following XML to the property dictionary:<key>FacebookAdvertiserIDCollectionEnabled</key><false/> - In some cases, you can delay the collection of
advertiser_id
to obtain the user consent or fulfill any legal obligations instead of disabling it entirely. To do so, call thesetAdvertiserIDCollectionEnabled
method of theFBSDKSettings
class and set it toYES
for iOS, ortrue
for Swift after the end-user provides consent, as shown:- In Objective-C:[FBSDKSettings setAdvertiserIDCollectionEnabled:@YES];
- In Swift:FBSDKSettings.setAdvertiserIDCollectionEnabled(true);
- In Objective-C:
- To suspend collection for any reason, set the
setAdvertiserIDCollectionEnabled
method toNO
for iOS orfalse
for Swift.- In Objective-C:[FBSDKSettings setAdvertiserIDCollectionEnabled:@NO];
- In Swift:FBSDKSettings.setAdvertiserIDCollectionEnabled(false)
- In Objective-C:
- To disable collection of
advertiser-id
, add the following code to yourAndroidManifest.xml
file:<application>...<meta-data android:name="com.facebook.sdk.AdvertiserIDCollectionEnabled"android:value="false"/>...</application> - In some cases, you can delay the collection of
advertiser_id
to obtain user consent or fulfill any legal obligations instead of disabling it entirely. To do so, call thesetAdvertiserIDCollectionEnabled()
method of theFacebookSDK
class and set it totrue
. This re-enables the collection ofadvertiser_id
after the end-user provides the required consent, as shown:setAdvertiserIDCollectionEnabled(true); - To suspend collection for any reason, set the
setAdvertiserIDCollectionEnabled()
method tofalse
, as shown:setAdvertiserIDCollectionEnabled(false)
Disable Automatic SDK Initialization
AndroidManifest.xml
file:<application> ... <meta-data androidName="com.facebook.sdk.AutoInitEnabled" androidValue="false"/> ...</application>
setAutoInitEnabled
and set it to true
to manually initialize the SDK after the end-user provides the required consent.FacebookSdk.setAutoInitEnabled(true)FacebookSdk.fullyInitialize()
FAQs
Where do I get the Facebook App ID?
You can find the Facebook App ID by logging into your Facebook Developer account, and navigating to the Home page of your Application dashboard.
Where do I get the Facebook Client Token?
You can find the Facebook Client Token by logging into your Facebook Developer account. Then, navigate to Settings - Advanced - Client Token in your app dashboard.
Contact us
If you come across any issues while configuring Facebook App Events with RudderStack, feel free to contact us or start a conversation in our Slack community.