Using Huawei App Messaging in Flutter

Huawei AppGallery Connect's App Messaging service allows you to send targeted, useful in app messages to your users.
The look and content of messages are completely customisable, and there is a wide range of triggers and filters that can be used to decide who will receive a message and when.
Lets take a look today at how we can set this up to work within a flutter project.

As always we will start with a fresh project but of course you can just as easily use this guide to build the service into an app you already have!

Installing the Flutter Environment

1. Download the Flutter SDK.
2. Decompress the package to any directory.
3. Add the Flutter command file to the environment variable.
4. Download the Flutter and Dart plugins in Android Studio.

Enabling the Service and Creating a Flutter project

Sign in to AppGallery Connect, click My projects, click your project, go to Grow > App Messaging, and click Use now. For more information, please refer to App Messaging.
If you do not have an Android project, create one first.
After completing these steps, you can start creating an in-app message.

Click New in the upper right corner.

Set Name and Description

Set the style and content and click Next.

Select a message type from the Layout drop-down list, and set its style and content. Currently, the Modal, Image, and Banner message types are supported.

Set target users and click Next.

In App, select the name of the app package for which you need to publish the in-app message.

You can click New condition to add a condition for matching target users, which include app version, OS version, language, country/region, audience, and more. Among the types, User attributes are defined under HUAWEI Analytics > Management > User attributes, and Prediction is defined by creating prediction tasks under My projects > Grow > Prediction.

Set the message sending time

Message display is triggered by specific events. App Messaging supports two types of trigger events: preset events and HUAWEI Analytics events.
(Optional) Set conversion events. Before setting a conversion event, you need to toggle it on first, which can be done as follows:
Go to HUAWEI Analytics > Management > Events and toggle Mark as conversion event and Event switch on for the specified event. In addition to the events the SDK collects, you can also create a preset or custom event for event tracking and analysis.

Finally, Click Save or Publish.

Integrating the Service SDK

Add dependencies

Start by creating a Flutter project in Android Studio (or opening one).
Then add the agconnect-services.json file from your AppGallery project to the android/app directory

Within the project level build.gradle file make sure to include the huawei maven repo and add the agcp package as a dependency.

	buildscript {
	repositories {
	google()
	mavenCentral()
	maven { url 'https://developer.huawei.com/repo/' }
	}
	dependencies {
	classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:7.0.4'
	classpath 'com.huawei.agconnect:agcp:1.6.2.300'
	}
	}

view raw build.gradle hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Next in your app level build.gradle apply the agconnect plugin as so:

	apply plugin: 'com.android.application'
	apply from: "$flutterRoot/packages/flutter_tools/gradle/flutter.gradle"
	apply plugin: 'com.huawei.agconnect'

view raw build.gradle hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Then in your pubspec.yaml file add the App Messaging SDK dependency.

	dependencies:
	flutter:
	sdk: flutter
	agconnect_appmessaging: ^1.2.0+300

view raw pubspec.yaml hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Displaying an In-App Message

If you choose to display a message using the default message layout, the development process is totally coding-free.
By integrating the SDK as above you are all good to go, your creating message will be displayed as per its filters and triggers.
You can also call APIs provided by the service SDK to customize your in-app message.

Customising the Message Layout

Add the following code to onCreate in MainActivity,

AGCAppMessagingCustomEventStreamHandler.addCustomView();

view raw MainActvitiy.dart hosted with ❤ by GitHub

so that the service SDK can listen to the corresponding event and apply the customized layout.

	streamSubscriptionDisplay = agconnectAppmessaging.customEvent.listen((event) {
	showDialog(context ,event.toString());
	agconnectAppmessaging.handleCustomViewMessageEvent
	(AppMessagingEventType.onMessageDismiss(AppMessagingDismissTypeConstants.CLICK));
	});

view raw MainActvitiy.dart hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Then the message is displayed in your app.

	void _showDialog(BuildContext context, String content) {
	showDialog(
	context: context,
	builder: (BuildContext context) {
	return AlertDialog(
	key: Key("dialog"),
	title: Text("Result"),
	content: Text(content),
	actions: <Widget>[
	FlatButton(
	child: new Text("Close"),
	onPressed: () {
	Navigator.of(context).pop();
	},
	)
	],
	);
	});
	}

view raw MainActvitiy.dart hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Testing an In-App Message

App Messaging allows you to test an in-app message before it is published. You need to obtain the Anonymous Application Identifier (AAID) of your test device by adding the following code to your Android app module.

	HmsInstanceId inst = HmsInstanceId.getInstance(this);
	Task<AAIDResult> idResult = inst.getAAID();
	idResult.addOnSuccessListener(new OnSuccessListener<AAIDResult>() {
	@Override
	public void onSuccess(AAIDResult aaidResult) {
	String aaid = aaidResult.getId();
	textView.setText(aaid);
	Log.d(TAG, "getAAID success:" + aaid );
	}
	}).addOnFailureListener(new OnFailureListener() {
	@Override
	public void onFailure(Exception e) {
	Log.d(TAG, "getAAID failure:" + e);
	}
	});

view raw MainActvitiy.java hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Sign in to AppGallery Connect, go to Grow > App Messaging > Messages, find the message that you created, click and select Test in the Operation column.

Click Add test user and enter the AAID

Click Save. Check whether the test message is properly displayed on your test device