How to access Adobe Tags in the iOS and Android SDK

[JohnPollard]

We are investigating using Adobe tags in our iOS and Android apps for configuring various systems i.e. turning features on and off.

I've been trying to find the SDK documentation on how to do that, and have so far drawn a blank.

I can see this tutorial which shows the app receiving the tags configuration, but I haven't found which API we would use to extract that information, use the settings in the app, and probably listen for any changes in the settings.

If anyone could point me in the right direction, that would be very helpful - thanks!

[Ivan_Mironchuk]

Hey John - you will find most of the information you are looking for on our dedicated Mobile SDK doc site: 

https://sdkdocs.com 

Most of the tags are not deployed in Launch, but can be controlled via Launch. Typically a trackAction or trackState call is made within the app to denote a button press or view switch etc. With each one of these calls you can attach additional context data. Data Elements can be created within Launch to alias the data flowing through the mobile app for additional controls and rule building. 

Hope that helps!

[JohnPollard]

Thanks Ivan - I don't think I was very clear in my original question.

What I'm looking for is to be able just to read incoming tags (e.g. things like feature flags) that have been set on the server, rather than track user events and post them up to the server (which is what we already do).

Am I misunderstanding that this is something we could do via Adobe Tags/Launch?

If so, is there a specific page in the docs that would point me to that SDK function? I've already searched the SDK docs and found nothing yet, which could be because I've misunderstood the feature set (or I'm not very good at searching!)

Thanks again

John

[Ryan_Morales]

Hi @JohnPollard, 

It sounds like you want to do some custom configuration after receiving the configuration json from Adobe Launch. There is an api to programmatically set the individual configuration settings: https://aep-sdks.gitbook.io/docs/foundation-extensions/mobile-core/configuration/configuration-api-r... and a sample of the configuration json downloaded from launch can be seen at https://aep-sdks.gitbook.io/docs/foundation-extensions/mobile-core/configuration#sample-configuratio.... Does this help with your issue?

Thanks,

Ryan

[Ivan_Mironchuk]

In addition to @Ryan_Morales  suggestion, you could look to set a rule within launch to perform to set a key value pair on the device, or go to a URL path. Attach or Modify data actions might work for this. That might be a way to trigger a feature flag. Do you have a conditional rule that you are looking to add before you trigger the update on the client app? 

[dwright · Accepted solution]

Feature flag tests are pretty common with Adobe Target. Here is a tutorial that describes the approach. The sample app and code examples use the old SDK, but the approach would be more or less similar in the current SDK. Similar to what @Ivan_Mironchuk describes, Target "sets a key value pair on the device". You can probably replicate the behavior with just the Mobile SDK and tags/Launch, if you don't have Target. https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/target-learn/mobile-sdk-v4-android/feature-flagging.html?lan...

[JohnPollard]

Thanks everyone for their very helpful replies - and @dwright that was just what we were looking for!