Getting Started

The Roku SDK allows you to use mParticle to track user activity in your Roku app.

Download

  1. Navigate to the releases section and download the latest tagged source, or clone the repository.
  2. Create an mparticle/ directory inside the pkg:/source/ directory.
  3. Copy mParticleBundle.crt and mParticleCore.brs into the newly created pkg:/source/mparticle directory.
  4. For Scene Graph support, copy mParticleTask.brs and mParticleTask.xml into your pkg:/components/ directory.

Initialize

The mParticle Roku SDK is compatible with both Scene Graph and legacy Roku channels - please reference the section below that applies to your environment.

Scene Graph Channels

The Scene Graph SDK allows for running mParticle entirely in a separate thread for better performance, upload batching, and more accurate session management. You should include a single mParticle Task in every scene in your channel.

1. Configure mParticle

When creating a new scene, include the mParticle credentials and options as the mparticleOptions field of the scene’s Global Node. mParticleTask.brs will look for this and automatically initialize mParticle for you.

sub main(args as dynamic)
    screen = CreateObject("roSGScreen")
    m.port = CreateObject("roMessagePort")
    screen.setMessagePort(m.port)
    scene = screen.CreateScene("HelloWorld")
    
    options = {}
    options.apiKey = "REPLACE WITH API KEY"
    options.apiSecret =  "REPLACE WITH API SECRET"
    
    'for deeplinking analytics, pass in your startup args
    options.startupArgs = args

    'you can force the SDK into development or production mode, 
    'otherwise the SDK will use roAppInfo's IsDev() API.
    options.environment = mParticleConstants().ENVIRONMENT.FORCE_PRODUCTION

    'If you know the users credentials, supply them here
    'otherwise the SDK will use the last known identities
    identityApiRequest = {userIdentities:{}}
    'Note that you must specifically use the 'userIdentities' key
    identityApiRequest.userIdentities[mparticleConstants().IDENTITY_TYPE.EMAIL] = "user@example.com"
    identityApiRequest.userIdentities[mparticleConstants().IDENTITY_TYPE.CUSTOMER_ID] = "123456"
    'Note that you must specifically use the 'identifyRequest' key
    options.identifyRequest = identityApiRequest

    'REQUIRED: mParticle will look for mParticleOptions in the global node
    screen.getGlobalNode().addFields({mparticleOptions: options})
    screen.show()
    
    while(true)
        msg = wait(0, m.port)
        msgType = type(msg)
        if msgType = "roSGScreenEvent"
            if msg.isScreenClosed() then return
        end if
    end while
end sub

See Identity for more information on the identityApiRequest.

If you plan to use proxy tools such as Charles Proxy for testing in your development build, you may wish to disable SSL pinning. To do so, insert the following line at the end of the options section (after options.apiSecret = "REPLACE WITH API SECRET"):

options.enablePinning = false

2. Include mParticleCore.brs in your Scene

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<component name="HelloWorld" extends="Scene"> 
  ...
  <!-- Replace with correct path if necessary -->
  <script type="text/brightscript" uri="pkg:/source/mparticle/mParticleCore.brs"/>
</component>

3. Create the mParticle Task Node:

Once you’ve added the mParticle Task to your scene, you can use the mParticleSGBridge() helper to make all calls to mParticle.

sub init()
    'Create the mParticle Task Node
    m.mParticleTask = createObject("roSGNode","mParticleTask")
    
    'Use the mParticle task node to create an instance an mParticleSGBridge
    mp = mParticleSGBridge(m.mParticleTask)
end sub

Legacy Channels

Initialize the SDK within your main method, or as soon as possible during the startup of your channel. In addition to your mParticle credentials, you must pass a reference to the message port of your main run loop, such that mParticle can make asynchronous network requests.

Within your main run loop, inspect the source identity and pass roUrlEvent objects to mParticle per the example below.

sub main(args as dynamic)
    screen = CreateObject("roPosterScreen") 
    port = CreateObject("roMessagePort")
    screen.SetMessagePort(port)

    screen.ShowMessage("Hello mParticle!")
    screen.Show()
    
    options = {}
    options.logLevel = mparticleConstants().LOG_LEVEL.DEBUG
    options.apiKey = "REPLACE WITH API KEY"
    options.apiSecret = "REPLACE WITH API SECRET"
    options.startupArgs = args

    'If you know the users credentials, supply them here
    'otherwise the SDK will use the last known identities
    identityApiRequest = {userIdentities:{}}
    'Note that you must specifically use the 'userIdentities' key
    identityApiRequest.userIdentities[mparticleConstants().IDENTITY_TYPE.EMAIL] = "user@example.com"
    identityApiRequest.userIdentities[mparticleConstants().IDENTITY_TYPE.CUSTOMER_ID] = "123456"
    'Note that you must specifically use the 'identifyRequest' key
    options.identifyRequest = identityApiRequest
    
    mParticleStart(options, port)

    while true
        msg = Wait(0, port)
        if type(msg) = "roUrlEvent"
            if mparticle().isMparticleEvent(msg.getSourceIdentity())
                mparticle().onUrlEvent(msg)
            end if
        else if type(msg) = "roPosterScreenEvent"
            if msg.isScreenClosed()
                exit while
            end if
        end if
    end while

    screen.Close()
end sub

The above will initialize the SDK, creating an mParticle install and user session.

See Identity for more information on the identityApiRequest.

Using the SDK

If using the legacy Roku SDK, you can reference mParticle directly via mParticle() anytime after you’ve called mParticleStart() as shown above. With Scene Graph, you must send messages to the mParticle Task thread over the mParticleSGBridge. mParticleSGBridge provides an API that mirrors the direct mParticle API, and will generate messages for you:

'For legacy SDK channels
mp = mparticle()

'For Scene Graph channels
mp = mParticleSGBridge(m.mParticleTask)

'The event APIs are the same for both Legacy and Scene Graph
mp.logEvent("hello world!")

Development vs. Production Environment

All integrations in mParticle can be configured either for development data, production data, or both. The mParticle Roku SDK will automatically detect at runtime whether a channel is a debug channel, and if so will mark data as development data. You may also override this (as well as other settings) via the options associative array referenced in the snippets above. See the DEFAULT_OPTIONS object within mParticleCore.brs for the complete list of customizable settings.

'generally unnecessary to set either of these, as the SDK will detect automatically
options.environment = mparticleConstants().ENVIRONMENT.FORCE_PRODUCTION
options.environment = mparticleConstants().ENVIRONMENT.FORCE_DEVELOPMENT

Custom Events

Custom Events represent specific actions that a user has taken in your channel. At minimum they require a name, but can also be associated a type, and a free-form dictionary of key/value pairs:

' defaults to CUSTOM_EVENT_TYPE.OTHER and no custom attributes
mp.logEvent("example") 

' or you can specify the custom event type and any custom attributes
customAttributes = {"example custom attribute" : "example custom attribute value"}
mp.logEvent("hello world!", mparticleConstants().CUSTOM_EVENT_TYPE.NAVIGATION, customAttributes)

Screen Events

Screen events are a special case of event specifically designed to represent the viewing of a screen. Several mParticle integrations support special functionality (e.g. funnel analysis) based on screen events.

mp.logScreenEvent("hello screen!")

eCommerce Events

The CommerceEvent is central to mParticle’s eCommerce measurement. CommerceEvents can contain many data points but it’s important to understand that there are 3 core variations:

  • Product-based: Used to measure measured datapoints associated with one or more products, such as a purchase.
  • Promotion-based: Used to measure datapoints associated with internal promotions or campaigns
  • Impression-based: Used to measure interactions with impressions of products and product-listings

The SDK provides a series of helpers and builders to create CommerceEvents. One of the simplest and most common scenarios would be to log a PURCHASE product action event:

mpConstants = mparticleConstants()
product = mpConstants.Product.build("foo-product-sku", "foo-product-name", 123.45)
productAction = mpConstants.ProductAction.build(actionApi.ACTION_TYPE.PURCHASE, 123.45, [product])
mp.logCommerceEvent(productAction)

Setting Integration Attributes

Occasionally certain integrations will require data that can only be provided client side. The ‘setIntegrationAttribute’ method allows clients to provide this data.

' This code would set the "app_instance_id" for integration 160 which is our Integration ID for Google Analytics 4
mp.setIntegrationAttribute("160", "app_instance_id", "your_app_instance_id")

Sample Channels

To help you get started, we’ve created a sample channel for both Legacy and Scene Graph.

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