Log every button press / interaction in an iOS App

Question

Is there a way to catch all sorts of user interactions, but first and foremost button presses in an iOS app? I'm interested in logging these events with a time stamp and ideally with the name of the screen they appear on.

I guess the simplest way is to insert a call of a custom log function into every action called by a button. But that's too much effort.

I also thought about subclassing UIButton, but this would still require me to change every button in an existing app and would work only for buttons (not cells in a table for example).

Is there a point were I can intercept touches in general? Or a point were I specifically know a button was pressed and I've a reference to that button?

(We research usability testing of mobile apps, so we aim at a modular solution that can be easily reused and needs as little manual changes of code as possible. But any suggestions are welcome, since I realize this might not be so easy.)

It's so easy if you subclass UIApplication, look at my answer ;-) — LombaX, Jul 08 '13 at 12:51

score 17 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 08 '13 at 12:50

You can subclass UIApplication:

Create an UIApplication Subclass
override the -(BOOL)sendAction:(SEL)action to:(id)target from:(id)sender forEvent:(UIEvent *)event method, remember to call the super implementation
put an NSLog or other diagnostic code inside the implementation

Example, this will print a log every time an UIButton is pressed:

-(BOOL)sendAction:(SEL)action to:(id)target from:(id)sender forEvent:(UIEvent *)event
{
    if ([sender isKindOfClass:[UIButton class]])
    {
        NSLog(@"Action: %@ - %@ - %@", NSStringFromSelector(action), target, sender);
    }

    return [super sendAction:action to:target from:sender forEvent:event];
}


2013-07-08 14:46:18.270 UIApplicationSubclass[94764:c07] Action: anAction: - <ViewController: 0x76790a0> - <UIRoundedRectButton: 0x767b9b0; frame = (103 66; 73 44); opaque = NO; autoresize = TM+BM; layer = <CALayer: 0x767bad0>>
2013-07-08 14:46:27.378 UIApplicationSubclass[94764:c07] Action: anAction: - <ViewController: 0x76790a0> - <UIRoundedRectButton: 0x767b9b0; frame = (103 66; 73 44); opaque = NO; autoresize = TM+BM; layer = <CALayer: 0x767bad0>>

Moreover, to subclass UIApplication, you must change the main.m file like this (In my case the UIApplication subclass was named FLApplication, look at the third parameter of the UIApplicationMain function and the import of FLApplication.h)

#import "AppDelegate.h"
#import "FLApplication.h"

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    @autoreleasepool {
        return UIApplicationMain(argc, argv, NSStringFromClass([FLApplication class]), NSStringFromClass([AppDelegate class]));
    }
}

it's working. Can we do same tracking while users are navigating from one screen to another screen? I would like to track which particular page user is navigating. — kb920, Mar 30 '20 at 02:18

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 01 '13 at 11:03

1

What exactly you need is Google Analytics. Logging each user interaction is not the proper way. You can use the google analytics to track user interactions within your app.

answered Jul 01 '13 at 11:03

Anil Varghese

42,757
9
93
110

1

Actually I think it's not. I want to conduct studies that require the raw data and not an aggregated version. I want to control what is being logged and how it's analysed. I need a separated data set for each user I conducted a test with and the exact time stamps to combine it with other information (screenshots / recordings). – Christian Jul 01 '13 at 11:19

Log every button press / interaction in an iOS App

2 Answers2

Linked