I know it’s not Kotlin related, but does someone use a proxy like Charles, for testing Google Analyt...

# android

[Dean Djermanović]

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. 🤷‍♂️

[gildor]

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]

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

[Dean Djermanović]

Yes, they are aware that events are sent in batches, but they still want to be able to inspect them using Charles. 🤷‍♂️

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]

So what is content? Maybe it's just gzipped content?

[gildor]

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

[Dean Djermanović]

This is what I see in Charles:

[Dean Djermanović]

And the error message that I see when I click on <unknown> says:

SSL handshake with client failed: An unknown issue occurred processing the certificate (certificate_unknown)

[Dean Djermanović]

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]

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.

[Dean Djermanović]

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

[gildor]

Maybe the domain is wrong in config?

[Dean Djermanović]

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. 🤔

[gildor]

It doesn’t look like that, just as some Charles proxy

[gildor]

Do you have access to raw body response?

[Dean Djermanović]

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]

I should be able to see them in the Network Inspector in Android Studio as well, right

No, I don’t think so

[gildor]

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

[gildor]

What kind library do you use? Because I have feling that Firebase Analytics doesn’t even work through google-analytics.com and there is no google analytics outside of Firebase for Android

[Dean Djermanović]

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

[gildor]

But it uses Firebase/GA under the hood anyway