Analytics - Data mismatch between CustomProperties and Pinpoint Attributes

[abdallahshaban557]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

We need to allow the update of user attributes to accept an array of values, similar to what is mentioned in this Github issue aws-amplify/amplify-flutter#2850

Describe the solution you'd like

Proposal:

Allow the Pinpoint Endpoint attributes field to be set as a Map<String, List> in UserProfile by:

• Removing the UserProfile.customProperties field
• Adding UserProfile.attributes of type Map<String, List>
• Adding UserProfile.metrics of type Map<String, double>

Describe alternatives you've considered

N/A

Is the feature request related to any of the existing Amplify categories?

Analytics

Additional context

No response

[ruisebas]

This is supported in the new UserProfile protocol that is used on the Push Notifications category, as UserProfilePropertyValue supports being an array of Strings.

So this is perfectly valid:

let userProfile = BasicUserProfile(
    name: "Name",
    customProperties: [
        "colours": ["red", "green", "blue"]
    ]
)

We just need to update Analytics's identifyUser API signature to take the new protocol instead of the old AnalyticsUserProfile

This however would be a breaking change, so what we could do instead is to define a new API and deprecate the old one:

public protocol AnalyticsCategoryBehavior {
    func identifyUser(userId: String, userProfile: UserProfile?)

    @available(*, deprecated, message: "AnalyticsUserProfile is deprecated, please use UserProfile instead")
    func identifyUser(userId: String, userProfile: AnalyticsUserProfile?)
}

[ruisebas]

@abdallahshaban557 regarding your proposal, one issue I see is that UserProfile is a category-level structure, while what you are proposing is very Pinpoint-specific (i.e. attributes being restricted to array of strings).

We aim to keep the Categories and their APIs as generic as possible, and the idea behind having just customProperties with a generic type was to encapsulate the many different types that can be accepted by the underlying service.
It is then up to the plugin to map them to their corresponding values.

For example, the existing Pinpoint plugins take care of mapping numeric properties to metrics, and boolean, string and array of strings to attributes.

[abdallahshaban557]

Understood - the request was mainly around making sure the attributes can accept an array of values as you've mentioned in your first response here. For the concerns you have on the UserProfile being a category level concept, that makes sense.

[github-actions]

This has been identified as a feature request. If this feature is important to you, we strongly encourage you to give a 👍 reaction on the request. This helps us prioritize new features most important to you. Thank you!

[ruisebas]

Tracked in #1416

[github-actions]

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