I know it s not Kotlin related but does someone use a proxy

Question

I know it s not Kotlin related but does someone use a proxy like Charles for testing Google Analytics 4 events I have a problem that I can see the requests being sent to the `<http ssl google analytics com|ssl google analytics com>` but I cannot see the request body Does GA4 intentionally hide this information for privacy reasons or is there some extra option I have to enable I also know that using proxy is not recommended way of validating GA4 events but this requirement from the marketing team man shrugging

gildor · Answer

It s a strange requirement because you cannot really know when GA will send events it creates batches If you want 100 check end to end it s better to use Firebase analytics Debug View which shows all events received from particular client

gildor · Answer

Anyway you can do this you should configure ssl proxy with own certificate google Charles ssl proxy

Dean Djermanović · Answer

Yes they are aware that events are sent in batches but they still want to be able to inspect them using Charles man shrugging gt you should configure ssl proxy with own certificate google Charles ssl proxy I did that that s the reason I m able to see the requests in the first place The problem is that I don t see the request body event name parameters etc It s the same on the iOS side That s why I m assuming that GA4 intentionally hides this information for privacy reasons but I didn t find anything in the GA4 documentation that confirms that They just say that it s not recommended to use proxy not that you cannot use proxy

gildor · Answer

So what is content Maybe it s just gzipped content

gildor · Answer

But why do they want to do this in Charles Really strange requirement

Dean Djermanović · Answer

This is what I see in Charles

Dean Djermanović · Answer

And the error message that I see when I click on ` lt unknown gt ` says ```SSL handshake with client failed An unknown issue occurred processing the certificate certificate unknown ```

Dean Djermanović · Answer

However I didn t even see the requests before I added the certificate so I wouldn t say that the problem is in the certificate itself

gildor · Answer

Is it Android 11+ Have you checked this <https stackoverflow com questions 71788048 android 11 ssl handshake fails when using charles proxy ~ text=Verify 20that 20you 20install 20 26 20trust own 20app 2C 20not 20other 20apps|https stackoverflow com questions 71788048 android 11 ssl handshake fails when using charles proxy ~ text=Verify 20that 20you 20install 20 26 20trust own 20app 2C 20not 20other 20apps>

Dean Djermanović · Answer

Yup I added that Never mind I ll keeping investigating this Thanks for your help

gildor · Answer

Maybe the domain is wrong in config

Dean Djermanović · Answer

I double checked everything One thing I haven t mentioned is that we don t use GA directly we use 3rd party library which reports events to google analytics Maybe that could be the problem thinking face

gildor · Answer

It doesn t look like that just as some Charles proxy

gildor · Answer

Do you have access to raw body response

Dean Djermanović · Answer

No Actually I think I don t see requests at all I should be able to see them in the Network Inspector in Android Studio as well right I guess the requests I saw in Charles sent to google analytics were from some other app

gildor · Answer

gt I should be able to see them in the Network Inspector in Android Studio as well right No I don t think so

gildor · Answer

Network Inspector works not on level of network it works on level of your application and only with HttpUrlConnection and OkHttp

gildor · Answer

What kind library do you use Because I have feling that Firebase Analytics doesn t even work through <http google analytics com|google analytics com> and there is no google analytics outside of Firebase for Android

Dean Djermanović · Answer

We use an internal library that simply serves as a wrapper around different analytics services

gildor · Answer

But it uses Firebase GA under the hood anyway