18 posts tagged with "memory leaks"

One of the challenges mobile app developers face is collecting as much relevant data to reproduce bugs reported during testing and more so production. In production even detecting bug occurrences becomes a challenge. Manual bug detection and data collection in Android mobile apps during testing and development environment is time consuming and in production it is near impossible. Here is where tools like Appxiom aid the developers.

Appxiom is an automated, light-weight bug reporting SDK for Android apps that helps developers to reduce the bug fixing time by providing clear and crisp issue reports with detailed data points for effective root cause analysis.

First things first, Appxiom has an easy three step integration process.

• Register with Appxiom using the ‘Get Started’ button in https://appxiom.com and login to the dashboard. 

• Use ‘Add App’ to link your Android app to Appxiom.

• Integrate Appxiom SDK to your app as a gradle library.

For a more detailed integration guide, visit our documentation pages for Android (Java & Kotlin).

Appxiom is capable of reporting multiple bug types in Android apps. Some of the main types of bugs in Android apps are,

Types of Issues captured and reported by Appxiom​

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Memory Leaks​

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Memory Leaks occur in Android apps when unused objects are not cleared from the device’s memory. Appxiom SDK has out of the box capability to detect memory leaks in Android apps. and reports it to the dashboard with data points like class stack, activity trail, device and device state info. 

Memory Leak in Android

Crashes​

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App Crashes are fatal and will affect the user experience, which may lead to user’s uninstalling the app. 

App Crash in AndroidWith basic integration, Appxiom SDK is capable of reporting crashes along with data points like device and device state data, activity trail and full stack trace.

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API Failures​

With a single line of code, Appxiom SDK is capable of reporting API issues like status code errors, delayed API call executions or even duplicate API calls. Appxiom reports API failures with detailed data points including network parameters like full URL, request-response headers and request body. 

API Issue in Android

Abnormal memory usage​

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When an app consumes a high amount of device’s memory, Appxiom SDK immediately reports it. Activity trail in issue report will enable developers to identify the reason for the spike in memory usage.

Abnormal Memory Usage in Android

Function failures​

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Issues in code level functions like unexpected return value, delay in function execution are called function failures. Appxiom SDK provides a single line API to track code level function failures. Data points like function parameters are sent along with each issue report with will aid developers in fixing the issue fast.

Function Failure in Android

Feature failures​

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Using the function tracking API, SDK allows developers to chain multiple functions. Once chained Appxiom will monitor if the second function is executed within the stipulated time (can be set by the developer) after the execution of the first function. If not, then Appxiom SDK reports it as an issue. This will enable developers to report any app feature failures.

Feature Failure in AndroidBug reports will include data points like activity trail, function parameters and return values.

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Custom issues​

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Appxiom SDK provides a single line API for developers to report any custom issues. 

Custom Issue report in Android

ANR​

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ANR or App Not Responding occurs due to frame rate issues in Android, that block the UI thread for more than 5 seconds. By tracing the Activity trail events, developers can reproduce and can fix ANR issues fast. 

ANR report in Android

Screen loading delay​

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Delay in loading of any activity or fragment will be automatically reported by Appxiom SDK. 

Screen Loading delay in AndroidNow, let us take a look at the data points in bug reports of Appxiom that help developers to reproduce the bugs effectively. 

Data Points Explained​

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Error insights​

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Error insights help the developers to find commonalities across occurrences for faster root cause analysis. Error insights consist of information like bandwidth strength, battery level, low memory warning, OS versions, device names, country name and timezone offsets. 

Error Insights from an issue report in Android

Activity Trail​

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Activity trail is a list of chronologically ordered app events, that helps developers to identify where the issue occurred. It consists of three components, 

• The Activity segment, that has the details of the app event.

• The timestamp segment, that has time at which the event got recorded.

• The memory segment, that shows the percentage of free memory.

Activity-trail from an issue report in Android

Stack trace​

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Stack trace helps the developers to track the exact line of code where the crash occurred.

Stack trace from an issue report in Android

Network Parameters​

Network parameters provide in-depth information on network request and response data. Network parameters will have request headers, request body, request body size, response headers, status code and response body size. 

Network parameters from an issue report in Android

Device & Device State info​

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Device & Device state info gives the developer information about the device and the state of the device at the time of bug occurrence.

Device and Device State data from an issue report in Android

Function Parameters​

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Function parameters section of data points will contain parameter value and data type of all the parameters passed to the function being tracked during runtime.

Function parameters from an issue report in Android

Data Security & Data Privacy​

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Appxiom SDK is architectured in such a way that all our app users remain anonymous to the system as we do not collect any PII which ensures data privacy. All data collected, sent and stored by Appxiom are secured with end to end encryption. Appxiom is also GDPR compliant.

Call back mechanism​

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For every issue that is raised by the Appxiom SDK, a callback function will be triggered, which allows developers to handle the issue gracefully. You can read more about the same in our Java and Kotlin documentation pages.

Appxiom is also available as Objective-C and Swift frameworks for iOS and watchOS. Visit appxiom.com to know more about Appxiom Detailed documentation is available at docs.appxiom.com.

Memory leak is a critical bug in watchOS apps, that often go unnoticed during development. Memory leaks can lead to EXC_BAD_ACCESS error and will manifest as app crashes in watchOS.

Memory leaks are caused when unused objects are not cleared from memory. It slows down the app, which affects the experience of the user. So detecting and fixing memory leaks as fast as possible is important for maintaining good user experience and thus retaining users. Tools like XCode Leaks Instrument available for watchOS will help developers detect memory leaks during the development of apps.

There are situations where developers tend to miss figuring out leaks during development. Such leaks are very likely to manifest in production.

This is where Appxiom come in. Appxiom watchOS framework monitors InterfaceControllers for retained objects and reports it in real-time.Appxiom detects memory leaks in watchOS apps just by extending InterfaceControllers from ObservableInterfaceController, a custom InterfaceController class provided by Appxiom.

Objective-c Integration​

@interface ProfileController : ObservableInterfaceController

@end

Swift Integration​

class ProfileController: ObservableInterfaceController {

}

Find the detailed documentation for Objective-C & Swift, on how to track memory leaks.

Appxiom reports memory leaks with relevant data points like leaked InterfaceController name, activity trail, device info, and device state info. This will help the developers to reproduce the memory leaks and find the root cause.

Here is a screenshot of the memory leak detected by Appxiom in a live watchOS app.

Memory Leak in watchOS appsMemory leak bug report provides the name of the InterfaceController where the leak occurred along with the total memory consumed by the app.

Apart from memory leaks, Appxiom also detects API call issues, frame rate issues, abnormal memory usage, crashes, exceptions, function failures & delays along with custom issues. For knowing more about how Appxiom detects memory leaks in iOS apps, please read our blog post Detect memory leaks in iOS (Objective-C & Swift).

Visit appxiom.com to know more about Appxiom. Detailed documentation is available at docs.appxiom.com.

Related Blog Posts

• How to detect memory leaks in Android

• Detect memory leaks in iOS (Objective-C & Swift)

Memory leak is one of the most dreadful issues developers fear. It's even bigger challenge for mobile app developers as very often the device where the issue manifests is out of their reach. Most of the time developers will not even get crash reports caused by memory leaks. They usually manifest in the form of EXC_BAD_ACCESS.

Tools like XCode Leaks Instrument for iOS help developers identify such leaks during development time itself. But what is the guarantee that all such leaks are identified and all possible use-cases are tested properly? There is no guarantee, and that is the hard truth.

So what if the developer and the tester missed some use cases and there are memory leaks happening in production? Here is where Appxiom help the developer to get notified about the issue in real-time and that too with as much relevant data as possible so that (s)he can reproduce the bug. Appxiom auto detects memory leaks.

Appxiom report bugs to the dashboard with important data such as activity trail, device info, and device state info. This will help the developer to be aware of the leaks happening in their app that is running in their users' devices and also helps them to reproduce the memory leak.

Here is a screenshot of such a leak detected by Appxiom in a live app.

With such reports, developers are notified of the occurrence of a memory leak in a ViewController. Developers can then use the Leaks instrument to drill down the corresponding ViewController for the leak.

Apart from memory leaks, Appxiom detects API call issues, frame rate issues, abnormal memory usage, crashes, exceptions, function failures & delays. It also has the capability to report custom issues. The memory leak detection is available in our iOS Framework starting from version 3.1.0. For knowing more about how Appxiom detects memory leaks in Android apps, read the blog How to detect bugs in Android.

Visit appxiom.com to know more about Appxiom. Detailed documentation is available at docs.appxiom.com.

Related Blog Posts

• How to detect memory leaks in Android

• How to Detect Memory Leaks in WatchOS apps that are created using Objective-C or Swift