Recording events with Flurry after app was launched due to a monitored region being entered

Question

The scenario is as follows. I have an iOS app that uses the CLLocationManager's region monitoring feature to notify the app when a predefined geographic region is entered. The way region monitoring works, the app can be notified of a user entering a region, even if the app was previously terminated. Basically, the operating system will launch the app (without bringing it to the foreground), when the region is entered, and gives the app a chance to respond to the region being entered.

What I am trying to do is log an event using Flurry when the region is entered. Currently, it does not seem to be working, as the events are not showing up in Flurry, even after several days. I should note that I have tested both i) that Flurry event logging is otherwise working OK when the app is launched as normal by the user and ii) that my app is indeed receiving the region entered and exited events (I use local notifications each time the region is entered or exited).

My suspicion is that it has something to do with the application delegate lifecycle differing when the app is launched as a result of entering a region versus when the app is launched as a result of the user starting it. My first suspicion was that application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: was not called when the app was launched in the background. Because my call to [Flurry startSession:@"my_key"] is in the application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: method, this would have explained things. However, the Apple documentation for startMonitoringForRegion:desiredAccuracy: suggests that application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: is in fact called:

If you begin monitoring a region and your application is subsequently terminated, the system automatically relaunches it into the background if the region boundary is crossed. In such a case, the options dictionary passed to the application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: method of your application delegate contains the key UIApplicationLaunchOptionsLocationKey to indicate that your application was launched because of a location-related event.

Although I'm using startMonitoringForRegion: and not startMonitoringForRegion:desiredAccuracy: (deprecated), I'm assuming that both call application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: . I then read a note in the Flurry documentation about startSession: (emphasis mine):

This method serves as the entry point to Flurry Analytics collection. It must be called in the scope of applicationDidFinishLaunching. The session will continue for the period the app is in the foreground until your app is backgrounded for the time specified in setSessionContinueSeconds:. If the app is resumed in that period the session will continue, otherwise a new session will begin. Note: If testing on a simulator, please be sure to send App to background via home button. Flurry depends on the iOS lifecycle to be complete for full reporting.

So, my suspicion is that even though I am testing on a real device, the app never gets "sent to the background" because when it launches it never enters the foreground to begin with. Can anyone clarify whether this is the reason for my logged events never showing up, or whether there is perhaps some other reason? And, is there a workaround for this?

Answer 1

So I contacted Flurry support and this is what I heard back:

So, at present its not possible to record / log events while the app is in the background.

Our engineering team is working on a solution to this and this should be available in one of the future versions of our SDK, in probably a months time.

So I guess we'll wait and see.