Android "Duplicate analytics client created"

[cristeahub]

This is a common issue on segment libraries for Android. The issue is that when you have already initialized the segment module on Android you cannot initialize it again without the app crashing.

This happens a lot when doing React Native development on Android, as running the Reload function (shake your device and press Reload) will cause this crash.

One solution is to guard the initialization on Android. While the doc of this project says you can catch errors when setting up, it doesn't seem to be working right now.

Here are some related issues in other repos with the same error:
https://github.com/leoilab/react-native-analytics-segment-io/issues/3
segmentio/analytics-android#538

[PaliwalSparsh]

Hi, I am facing the same issue. I have got "version": "0.0.1-beta.2" from npm and it breaks the app everytime i reload in development mode, saying 'Duplicate analytics client created'.

Should I be worried about using this in production?

Would turning initialization and tracking off in dev mode be a good solution for now. I can do this if I am sure, this problem does not occur in production mode.

[cristeahub]

Should I be worried about using this in production?

In my experience I haven't had any issues in production, only when reloading during development.

One very quick solution is to do something like this:

--- a/android/src/main/java/com/segment/analytics/reactnative/core/RNAnalyticsModule.kt
+++ b/android/src/main/java/com/segment/analytics/reactnative/core/RNAnalyticsModule.kt
@@ -69,9 +69,13 @@ class RNAnalyticsModule(context: ReactApplicationContext): ReactContextBaseJavaM
             builder.logLevel(Analytics.LogLevel.VERBOSE)
         }
 
-        Analytics.setSingletonInstance(
-            RNAnalytics.buildWithIntegrations(builder)
-        )
+        try {
+            Analytics.setSingletonInstance(
+                RNAnalytics.buildWithIntegrations(builder)
+            )
+        } catch(e: Exception) {
+            // Ignore, most likely error during development
+        }
     }
 
     @ReactMethod

With this I haven't had any issues in our builds, neither during development or production. I can't 100 % be sure this won't ever break in production, but our numbers seems to match that this is fine to do.

You can of course also expand this by adding some more error logging if you want to.

[PaliwalSparsh]

Thanks it worked for me. Looking forward for this to be integrated in the main build.

[sfhallahan]

@fathyb any timeline for when e406197 will be merged? Still having problems with this issue

[taykcrane]

@fathyb Hate to bother, but we're excited about this fix too. Let us know if you have a timeline?

[adteulade]

Same here if you could please let us know when the fix has been merged.

[RajanJS]

@fathyb
@michaelkitson
Any updates?

[AChevallier]

The problem is annoying :(

@fathyb
Any updates?

[gsunsnackv]

Me too comment. And also feels in some strange situation we get this in production app

[anandwahed]

@fathyb will the fix be merged anytime soon or is there any other workaround for this issue during the app development?

[gsunsnackv]

Our workaround is to not load at all during development

On Sat, Feb 16, 2019 at 6:51 AM Anand Prabhu ***@***.***> wrote: @fathyb <https://github.com/fathyb> will the fix be merged anytime soon or is there any other workaround for this issue during the app development? — You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#16 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AqDoILrWD99TlqA-QEUk8ZZ61guzxMfzks5vOBr_gaJpZM4YETBd> .

-- Gordon Sun CTO of Snack https://www.snackv.com https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snack/id1320646141

[cristeahub]

This is what we do #16 (comment) . Decide for yourselves if you only want to apply this patch in dev or not.

[gsunsnackv]

We are seeing another crash in our production system.

[sejas]

Yeah, I am having the same error in production and in development.
Very annoying.

try catch, .catch or consulting analytics.ready didn't work at all.

[anandwahed]

@sejas the solution posted by @cristeahub #16 (comment) works fine for us. Till not we haven't seen any issues in the production as well.

[sejas]

Thank you @anandwahed !
I already forked this repo to have a fixed version.

Thanks to crashlytics I detected this issue in production.
They are raised because I use code push to deploy OTA.
When the app is reloaded with the new version, the analytics.setup is called again, and my clients enjoy a new crash.
I am not totally sure if this is the only scenario where this library crashes in production.

It would be great if you handle this native error and then raise it to JS to handle it there.

Thanks !

[snackvideo-dkeith]

We forked the repo, and implemented this solution. Here is a link to the repo

You can include this fork with yarn add https://github.com/snackvideo/analytics-react-native. We created this branch by

1. Cloning this repo
2. Running yarn to install dependencies
3. Making the changes quoted below
4. Running yarn core build to build the @segment/react-native package.
5. Then we put the contents of packages/core into our repo

One very quick solution is to do something like this:

--- a/android/src/main/java/com/segment/analytics/reactnative/core/RNAnalyticsModule.kt
+++ b/android/src/main/java/com/segment/analytics/reactnative/core/RNAnalyticsModule.kt
@@ -69,9 +69,13 @@ class RNAnalyticsModule(context: ReactApplicationContext): ReactContextBaseJavaM
             builder.logLevel(Analytics.LogLevel.VERBOSE)
         }
 
-        Analytics.setSingletonInstance(
-            RNAnalytics.buildWithIntegrations(builder)
-        )
+        try {
+            Analytics.setSingletonInstance(
+                RNAnalytics.buildWithIntegrations(builder)
+            )
+        } catch(e: Exception) {
+            // Ignore, most likely error during development
+        }
     }
 
     @ReactMethod

With this I haven't had any issues in our builds, neither during development or production. I can't 100 % be sure this won't ever break in production, but our numbers seems to match that this is fine to do.

You can of course also expand this by adding some more error logging if you want to.

[briwong]

@fathyb - any luck getting this merged? We're also experiencing this in our prod environment

[jpolo]

When using appcenter codepush : this causes the app crash :(

[anandwahed]

@jpolo even with the fix mentioned by @snackvideo-dkeith #16 (comment) ?

[dgritsko]

Any movement on this issue?

[f2prateek]

sorry for the delay, have you tried pulling in the fix e406197 ?

You can run try it with yarn add https://github.com/segmentio/analytics-react-native#e406197f6241e4311bf8fd533d995923c79eb310

[sampsonjoliver]

👍 to having this error with CodePush. Unpleasant choosing between our delivery mechanism, and our analytics tracking mechanism.

@f2prateek trying that, yarn gives the error error Can't add "@internal/analytics-react-native": invalid package version undefined. @snackvideo-dkeith's fork works (thank you!), though I'd rather not ship a production version of our app based on an unpublished third-party fork! Any word on this fix being published?

[petergaultney]

Looks like there's a fix implemented but not yet released? Any idea when this might get released? We're not excited about the idea of yarn adding a specific, unreleased hash of this project.

[briwong]

Hi @calvinfo - do you think this fix can be expedited? Like most users above, we're having to choose between including Segment and CodePush in our app, which is really unpleasant

[jpolo]

I have contacted the support directly to explain the problem as this repository does not seems to have activity.
I waited 10 days for an answer that is something like "It's in the ticket system, I am waiting for an ETA"

I suggest every concerned people to contact support to make these issue more visible and make the Segment devs to do more active support.

[fathyb]

Hey everyone, we've released a bug fix in 0.0.1-beta.4: https://github.com/segmentio/analytics-react-native/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#001-beta4-2019-03-29

[gsunsnackv]

I confirm that it works. RR refresh in dev mode now does not crash anymore so it should not happen in production as well

[jpolo]

Thanks @fathyb !

[kevinpham404]

I came across this bug for iOS, using React Native.
Error triggered when trying to use recordScreenViews: true or trackAppLifecycleEvents: true.

Solution:
If you are encountering this error for React Native, and you are using CocoaPods, make sure you are not installing both Analytics and RNAnalytics in your podfile.

Having both declared seems to cause the duplicate analytics client bug.

[benevbright]

I having similar issue but it's different.
Because I'm trying to use Segment from both RN side and native side with same writeKey.
I wrote about my problem here #95
Anyone's trying to do the same?