Appcues Capacitor Plugin

Appcues Capacitor Plugin allows you to integrate Appcues experiences into your Ionic apps for iOS and Android devices.

This capacitor is a bridge between the native Appcues SDKs in an Ionic application which sends user properties and events to the Appcues API and retrieves and renders Appcues content based on those properties and events.

• Appcues Capacitor Plugin
  • 🚀 Getting Started
    • Prerequisites
      • Android
      • iOS
    • Installation
    • One Time Setup
      • Initializing the SDK
      • Supporting Builder Preview and Screen Capture
      • Enabling Push Notifications
    • Identifying Users
    • Tracking Screens and Events
  • 📝 Documentation
  • 🎬 Examples
  • 👷 Contributing
  • 📄 License

🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

Android

Your application's build.gradle must have a compileSdkVersion of 34+ and minSdkVersion of 21+. Your project should use the Android Gradle Plugin (AGP) version 8 or above.

android {
    compileSdkVersion 34

    defaultConfig {
        minSdkVersion 21
    }
}

Due to the SDK usage of Jetpack Compose, it is required to either:

1. apply kotlin-android plugin in app's build.gradle file.

plugins {  
  id 'com.android.application' 
  id 'kotlin-android' 
}

2. OR Update Android Gradle Plugin 8.4.0+

Related Google issue regarding usage of the Jetpack Compose dependency versions 1.6+

If your project fails to build with similar error:

(25, 39): Class 'kotlin.Unit' was compiled with an incompatible version of Kotlin. 
The binary version of its metadata is 1.9.0, expected version is 1.7.1.

Make sure to set the appropriate kotlin_version on your project build.gradle file

ext.kotlin_version = ‘1.7.20’

iOS

Your application must target iOS 11+ to install the SDK, and iOS 13+ to render Appcues content. Update the iOS project xcodeproj to set the deployment target, if needed. In the application's Podfile, include at least this minimum version.

# Podfile
platform :ios, '11.0'

Installation

In your app's root directory, run:

npm install @appcues/capacitor

npx cap sync

Note: You do not need to manually update your Podfile to add Appcues.

One Time Setup

Initializing the SDK

An instance of the Appcues SDK should be initialized when your app launches.

import { Appcues } from '@appcues/capacitor';

Appcues.initialize({accountId: 'APPCUES_ACCOUNT_ID', applicationId: 'APPCUES_APPLICATION_ID'})

Initializing the SDK requires you to provide two values, an Appcues account ID, and an Appcues mobile application ID. These values can be obtained from your Appcues settings. Refer to the help documentation on Registering your mobile app in Studio for more information.

Supporting Builder Preview and Screen Capture

During installation, follow the steps outlined in Configuring the Appcues URL Scheme. This is necessary for the complete Appcues builder experience, supporting experience preview, screen capture and debugging.

Enabling Push Notifications

In an Ionic app, push notifications are configured in the native projects for iOS and Android. Please refer to native documentation on iOS and Android for more details. The example directory in this repository contains a reference implementation that includes push notification support.

Identifying Users

In order to target content to the right users at the right time, you need to identify users and send Appcues data about them. A user is identified with a unique ID.

// Identify a user
Appcues.identify({userId: 'my-user-id'})
// Identify a user with property
Appcues.identify({ userId: 'my-user-id', properties: { company: "Appcues" }})

After identifying a user, you can optionally associate that user with group.

// Associate a user with a group, optionally including group properties
Appcues.group({ groupId: 'group-id', properties: { plan: "standard" }})

To ensure the most accurate content targeting based upon group information, it's recommended to supply the group information immediately after a new user is identified.

Tracking Screens and Events

Events are the “actions” your users take in your application, which can be anything from clicking a certain button to viewing a specific screen. Once you’ve installed and initialized the Appcues Capacitor Plugin, you can start tracking screens and events using the following methods:

// Track event
Appcues.track({name: "Sent Message"})
// Track event with property
Appcues.track({name: "Deleted Contact", properties: { id: 123 }})

// Track screen
Appcues.screen({title: "Contact List"})   
// Track screen with property
Appcues.screen({title: "Contact List", properties: { reference: "abc" }})

📝 Documentation

More technical documentation about this capacitor is available in the docs. Auto-generated documentation is available here.

Full documentation is available at https://docs.appcues.com/

🎬 Examples

The example directory in this repository contains full example iOS/Android app to providing references for correct installation and usage of the Appcues API.

👷 Contributing

See the contributing guide to learn how to get set up for development and how to contribute to the project.

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.