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Android Client SDK

Getting Started​

The following will outline how to get up and running with Statsig for Android.

Create an Account​

To work with the SDK, you will need a Statsig account. If you don't yet have an account, go ahead and sign up for a free account now.

You could skip this for now, but you will need an SDK key and some gates/experiments to use with the SDK in just a minute.

Installation​

You can install the SDK using JitPack. See the latest version and installation steps at https://jitpack.io/#statsig-io/android-sdk.

Initialize the SDK​

After installation, you will need to initialize the SDK using a Client SDK key from the "API Keys" tab on the Statsig console.

These Client SDK Keys are intended to be embedded in client side applications. If need be, you can invalidate or create new SDK Keys for other applications/SDK integrations.

info

Do NOT embed your Server Secret Key in client side applications

In addition to the SDK key, you should also pass in a StatsigUser for feature gate targeting and experimentation grouping purposes.

The 3rd parameter is optional and allows you to pass in a StatsigOptions to customize the SDK.

import com.statsig.androidsdk.*;
...

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity implements IStatsigCallback {

    ...
    StatsigOptions options = new StatsigOptions();
    options.setTier(Tier.PRODUCTION);
    StatsigUser user = new StatsigUser("UUID");
    Statsig.initializeAsync(app, "client-key", user, this, options);
    ...
    // SDK is usable, but values will be from the cache or defaults (false for gates, {} for configs)
    // Once onStatsigInitialize fires, then


    @Override
    public void onStatsigInitialize() {
        // SDK is initialized and has the most up to date values
    }

    @Override
    public void onStatsigUpdateUser() {
        // User has been updated and values have been refetched for the new user
    }

}

Working with the SDK​

Checking a Gate​

Now that your SDK is initialized, let's check a Feature Gate. Feature Gates can be used to create logic branches in code that can be rolled out to different users from the Statsig Console. Gates are always CLOSED or OFF (think return false;) by default.

if (Statsig.checkGate("new_homepage_design")) {
  // Gate is on, show new home page
} else {
  // Gate is off, show old home page
}

Reading a Dynamic Config​

Feature Gates can be very useful for simple on/off switches, with optional but advanced user targeting. However, if you want to be able send a different set of values (strings, numbers, and etc.) to your clients based on specific user attributes, e.g. country, Dynamic Configs can help you with that. The API is very similar to Feature Gates, but you get an entire json object you can configure on the server and you can fetch typed parameters from it. For example:

DynamicConfig config = Statsig.getConfig("awesome_product_details");

// The 2nd parameter is the default value to be used in case the given parameter name does not exist on
// the Dynamic Config object. This can happen when there is a typo, or when the user is offline and the
// value has not been cached on the client.
String itemName = config.getString("product_name", "Awesome Product v1");
Double price = config.getDouble("price", 10.0);
Boolean shouldDiscount = config.getBoolean("discount", false);

Getting an Layer/Experiment​

Then we have Layers/Experiments, which you can use to run A/B/n experiments. We offer two APIs, but we recommend the use of layers to enable quicker iterations with parameter reuse.

// Values via getLayer

Layer layer = Statsig.getLayer("user_promo_experiments")
String promoTitle = layer.getString("title", "Welcome to Statsig!");
Double discount = layer.getDouble("discount", 0.1);

// or, via getExperiment

DynamicConfig titleExperiment = Statsig.getExperiment("new_user_promo_title");
DynamicConfig priceExperiment = Statsig.getExperiment("new_user_promo_price");

String promoTitle = titleExperiment.getString("title", "Welcome to Statsig!");
Double discount = priceExperiment.getDouble("discount", 0.1);

...

Double price = msrp * (1 - discount);

Logging an Event​

Now that you have a Feature Gate or an Experiment set up, you may want to track some custom events and see how your new features or different experiment groups affect these events. This is super easy with Statsig - simply call the Log Event API for the event, and you can additionally provide some value and/or an object of metadata to be logged together with the event:

Statsig.logEvent("purchase", 2.99, Map.of("item_name", "remove_ads"));

Statsig User​

You should provide a StatsigUser object whenever possible when initializing the SDK, passing as much information as possible in order to take advantage of advanced gate and config conditions (like country or OS/browser level checks).

Most of the time, the userID field is needed in order to provide a consistent experience for a given user (see logged-out experiments to understand how to correctly run experiments for logged-out users).

If the user is logged out at the SDK init time, you can leave the `userID` out for now, and we will use a stable device ID that we create and store in the local storage for targeting purposes.

Besides userID, we also have email, ip, userAgent, country, locale and appVersion as top-level fields on StatsigUser. In addition, you can pass any key-value pairs in an object/dictionary to the custom field and be able to create targeting based on them.

Once the user logs in or has an update/changed, make sure to call updateUser with the updated userID and/or any other updated user attributes:

StatsigUser newUser = new StatsigUser("new_user_id");
Statsig.updateUserAsync(newUser, this); // this must implement IStatsigCallback

...

@Override
public void onStatsigUpdateUser() {
    // User has been updated and values have been refetched for the new user
}

Private Attributes​

Have sensitive user PII data that should not be logged? No problem, we have a solution for it! On the StatsigUser object we also have a field called privateAttributes, which is a simple object/dictionary that you can use to set private user attributes. Any attribute set in privateAttributes will only be used for evaluation/targeting, and removed from any logs before they are sent to Statsig server.

For example, if you have feature gates that should only pass for users with emails ending in "@statsig.com", but do not want to log your users' email addresses to Statsig, you can simply add the key-value pair { email: "my_user@statsig.com" } to privateAttributes on the user and that's it!

Statsig Options​

You can pass in an optional parameter options in addition to sdkKey and user during initialization to customize the Statsig client. Here are the current options and we are always adding more to the list:

  • api - String, default https://api.statsig.com/v1/

    • The default endpoint to use for all SDK network requests. You should not override this (unless you have another API that implements the Statsig API endpoints)

  • disableCurrentActivityLogging: Boolean, default false

    • by default, any custom event your application logs with Statsig.logEvent() includes the current top-level activity. This is so we can generate user journey funnels for your users. You can set this parameter to true to disable this behavior.

  • disableDiagnosticsLogging: Boolean, default false

    • Prevent the SDK from sending useful debug information to Statsig

  • initTimeoutMs: Long, default 3000

    • used to decide how long the Statsig client waits for the initial network request to respond before calling the completion block. The Statsig client will return either cached values (if any) or default values if checkGate/getConfig/getExperiment is called before the initial network request completes.
    • if you always want to wait for the latest values fetched from Statsig server, you should set this to 0 so we do not timeout the network request.
    • unit is milliseconds.

  • enableAutoValueUpdate: Boolean, default false

    • by default, Statsig will only fetch the gates/configs for the user when initialize() is called. This ensures a consistent experience for the duration of a session. If you want to override this behavior and have flags/configs update in near real time, pass true instead.

  • overrideStableID: String?, default null

    • overrides the stableID in the SDK that is set for the user

  • loadCacheAsync: Boolean, default false

    • Whether or not the SDK should block on loading saved values from disk.

  • initializeValues: Map<String, Any>?, default null

    • Provide the initialize response values directly to the Android SDK to synchronously initialize the client. You can generate these values from a Statsig Server SDK like the NodeJS Server SDK

  • disableHashing: Boolean?, default false

    • When disabled, the SDK will not hash gate/config/experiment names, instead they will be readable as plain text.
    • Note: This requires special authorization from Statsig. Reach out to us if you are interested in this feature.

Methods​

  • setTier | setEnvironmentParameter | getEnvironment
    • used to signal the environment tier the user is currently in.
    • setTier can be PRODUCTION, STAGING or DEVELOPMENT. e.g. passing in a value of Tier.STAGING will allow your users to pass any condition that pass for the staging environment tier, and fail any condition that only passes for other environment tiers.
    • setEnvironmentParameter can be used for custom tiers, eg options.setEnvironmentParameter("tier", "test")

Shutting Statsig Down​

In order to save users' data and battery usage, as well as prevent logged events from being dropped, we keep event logs in client cache and flush periodically. Because of this, some events may not have been sent when your app shuts down.

To make sure all logged events are properly flushed or saved locally, you should tell Statsig to shutdown when your app is closing:

Statsig.shutdown();

Local Overrides​

If you want to locally override gates/configs/experiments/layers, there are a set of override APIs as follows.

// Overrides the given gate to the specified value
overrideGate(gateName: String, value: Boolean)

// Overrides the given config (dynamic config or experiment) to the provided value
overrideConfig(configName: String, value: Map<String, Any>)

// Removes any overrides associated with the provided gate/config/experiment name
removeOverride(name: String)

// Removes all overrides
removeAllOverrides()

// Returns the set of gate and config overrides currently in place on the client
getAllOverrides(): StatsigOverrides

class StatsigOverrides(
    @SerializedName("gates")
    val gates: MutableMap<String, Boolean>,

    @SerializedName("configs")
    val configs: MutableMap<String, Map<String, Any>>
    ) {}
note
  1. These only apply locally on the device where they are being tested - they do not update definitions in the Statsig console or elsewhere.
  2. These will be persisted to local storage on the device, so overrides will persist across sessions. If you want to clear out the overrides, you can remove them all with removeAllOverrides or remove a specific override with removeOverride
  3. The local override API is not designed to be a full mock. They are only a convenient way to override the value of the gate/config/etc.

Manual Exposures v4.9.0+​

danger

Manually logging exposures can be tricky and may lead to an imbalance in exposure events. For example, only triggering exposures for users in the Test group of an experiment will imbalance the experiment, making it useless.

Added in version 4.9.0, you can now query your gates/experiments without triggering an exposure as well as manually logging your exposures.

To check a gate without an exposure being logged, call the following.

// Kotlin
val result = Statsig.checkGateWithExposureLoggingDisabled("a_gate_name")
	
// Java
boolean result = Statsig.checkGateWithExposureLoggingDisabled("a_gate_name");

Later, if you would like to expose this gate, you can call the following.

// Kotlin
Statsig.manuallyLogGateExposure("a_gate_name")
	
// Java
Statsig.manuallyLogGateExposure("a_gate_name");

Stable ID​

Each client SDK has the notion of StableID, and identifier that is generated the first time the SDK is initialized and is stored locally for all future sessions. Unless storage is wiped (or app deleted), the StableID will not change. This allows us to run device level experiments and experiments when other user identifiable information is unavailable (Logged out users).

You can get the StableID for the current device with:

Statsig.getStableID();

If you have your own form of StableID and would prefer to use it instead of the Statsig generated ID, you can override it through StatsigOptions:

val opts = StatsigOptions(overrideStableID = "my_stable_id")
Statsig.initialize(app, "client-xyx", options = opts)

FAQ​

How do I run experiments for logged out users?​

See the guide on device level experiments