How to Add a Device Mode SDK to RudderStack JavaScript SDK
Detailed documentation to add a native SDK to RudderStack JavaScript SDK to enable native SDK support.
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Detailed documentation to add a native SDK to RudderStack JavaScript SDK to enable native SDK support.
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There are two main modes of routing your event data to the required destinations:
Cloud Mode: Our web and mobile SDKs provide APIs that can be called in case of events like identify
,page
,screen
,track
etc. The SDK formats the data and sends to the Data Plane. The Data Plane transforms the data, and routes the events to the destination. RudderStack Transformers transform the event payload to a destination-specific payload. **
Device Mode: Another way to send events to the destinations is with their client libraries. RudderStack SDKs can initialize and transform the events, and call into the required destination APIs to route your events. These destination libraries once initialized can auto-track events without any explicit call from RudderStack. For example - the destination Hotjar, once initialized through RudderStack, starts capturing all forms of event data.
Before adding a Device mode destination libraries to RudderStack JS, the corresponding destination should be added via the Control Plane.
The following screenshot demonstrates how to enable the native SDK to send events:
Move the Native SDK slider to enabled
Add your integration under https://github.com/rudderlabs/rudder-sdk-js/tree/master/integrations with the code as shown above in browser.js
and an index.js
for exporting the integration.
Import the above integration in https://github.com/rudderlabs/rudder-sdk-js/blob/master/integrations/GA/index.js and add it to the exported list to be picked up by the base RudderStack SDK.
The exported integration object must be under the key name that matches the config-plane destination name.
Get the config specific to your integration from the config object fetched by the base RudderStack SDK from the config plane and construct your integration object with the related configs.
We have a few native integrations already present in our JavaScript SDK. Please debug through them for any parameter references and call flow.
Below is a sample for Google Analytics native integration:
The following code implements the Google Analytics native integration under the file integrations/GA/browser.js
:
The following is the code for index.js
under integrations/GA/index.js
:
You can ignore the Node counterpart as it's legacy. We have a separate Node.js SDK for sending events to RudderStack (in the server-side connection mode)
The following is the code for adding the newly-added integration to the export list. The key name must be the same as the one configured in the config plane.
The native integrations should have the following methods for initializing the destination global object and forwarding event data.
constructor
The RudderStack JavaScript SDK constructs an integration object with the destination config such as name
, apiKey
, custom mappings
etc. fetched from your config plane. This information is required by the subsequent calls.
isLoaded
This function is polled to check if the destination is ready
init
Adds the destination script, i.e. the JavaScript snippet provided by the destination to initialize a global queue on window object.
identify
RudderStack's JavaScript SDK calls this method to pass the identify
event data. Destination-specific implementation can be added here.
page
This method is called to pass the page
event data.
track
This method is called to pass the track
event data.
RudderStack JavaScript SDK makes a call to the config plane to fetch all native SDK-enabled destinations, before constructing and initializing the integration object with the fetched configuration. The isLoaded
method should return true when the destination is ready to accept events.
In case you come across any queries, please feel free to contact us. You can also raise an issue on our GitHub repository, if you come across any bugs.
This exports the list of all native integrations This exports the GoogleAds integration