Installation and Initialization

The Rover SDK is an Android library written in Kotlin. The SDK is 100% open-source and available on GitHub.

Install the SDK

The first step is to add the library as a dependency.

Ensure that you have Rover’s maven repository added to the dependencies → repositories block of your app-level build.gradle:

dependencies {
    // ...
    repositories {
        // ...
        maven {
            url "http://roverplatform.github.io/rover-android/maven"
        }
    }
}

Then add the following to your application-level build.gradle file (not the top level build.gradle, but rather your app-level one) in the dependencies block.

dependencies {
    // ...
    implementation "io.rover:sdk:3.7.1"
}

Initialization

You must initialize the Rover SDK with your account token. In your app’s Application.onCreate method or anywhere else you prefer to put initialization logic (such as a dependency injection framework), call Rover.initialize:

Rover.installSaneGlobalHttpCache(application)
Rover.initialize(this, "<YOUR-SDK-TOKEN>")

Notice Rover.installSaneGlobalHttpCache(): to keep its footprint small Rover uses Android’s built-in HTTP client, HttpsUrlConnection, and a characteristic of that HTTP client is that its cache must be enabled or disabled globally. Rover requires a working HTTP client cache, and so asks you to invoke this method here to explicitly install a cache to ensure that you are not surprised by Rover changing global configuration. Note that this will have no impact on the other components of your app if you use OkHttp/Retrofit or Volley.

Wherever you put it, you need to be certain that Rover is initialized before Android can dispatch an Intent to the app, such as a push notification or deep link open.

Add Rover Host Activity

Add RoverActivity to your AndroidManifest.xml, setting a Material theme such that the toolbar will properly display your brand colours:

<activity
    android:name="io.rover.sdk.ui.containers.RoverActivity"
    android:theme="@style/AppTheme.NoActionBar"
/>

Note that you must use a theme that disables the built-in Android AppBar because our view embeds an explicit Android toolbar. Here’s an example definition for AppTheme above:

<!-- Base application theme. -->
<style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar">
    <!-- Customize your theme here. -->
    <item name="colorPrimary">@color/myBrandColorPrimary</item>
    <item name="colorPrimaryDark">@color/myBrandColorPrimaryDark</item>
    <item name="colorAccent">@color/myBrandColorAccent</item>
</style>

Usage

You can start and run the RoverActivity either an experience ID or an experience universal link URL. With either you may pass along a Campaign ID to be included with the tracked Events.

For an Experience ID:

startActivity(
        RoverActivity.makeIntent(this, experienceId = "my-experience-id", campaignId = null)
)

or, for a universal link URL:

startActivity(
        RoverActivity.makeIntent(this, experienceUrl = Uri.parse("https//example.rover.io/slug"), campaignId = null)
)