Race-condition when detecting if an in-app message should show

[Henry Glendening]

Describe the bug
There seems to be a race-condition that may be experienced in regards to showing/not showing in-app messages in activities when the CLEVERTAP_INAPP_EXCLUDE AndroidManifest key is used.

In the function checkExistingInAppNotifications(Activity activity) of InAppController.java, before the SDK attempts to display an in-app message, it first performs a check to ensure that the given activity is not a part of the CLEVERTAP_INAPP_EXCLUDE exclusion list. Although this function (checkExistingInAppNotifications(Activity activity)) accepts an argument for which activity is being used, the function that it calls to check for exclusion (canShowInAppOnActivity) does not accept this argument and instead checks against the current activity. This function works by looping over each excluded activity name, and within each iteration of the loop, the code will do another fetch for the current activity.

These are the two places where the race condition may happen (using the current activity when checking the exclusion list, and using an updated current activity name within each loop iteration). As the app is continuing to transition between activities while the app is started or resumed, the current activity may be quickly changing. Since the canShowInAppOnActivity is not referencing the same activity name that checkExistingInAppNotifications(Activity activity) pertains too, there's no guarantee (and actually a likelihood) that canShowInAppOnActivity will return a value that is inaccurate, leading to an in-app message being shown on an excluded activity.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Add the app's launch activity's name to the CLEVERTAP_INAPP_EXCLUDE's value in the AndroidManifest.xml
2. Setup the launch activity to transition to a different activity after 5 seconds
3. Run the app and background it
4. Send a test in-app message from CleverTap to the device
5. Tap on the push notification
6. View the in-app message appear in 1 of 2 places:

• The launch activity
• The other activity

Repeat several times and observe varying results in step 6

Expected behavior
The in-app message is not displayed on an excluded activity and is withheld until a different activity is presented

Environment (please complete the following information):

• Device: Samsung Galaxy S20
• OS: Android 13
• CleverTap SDK Version: 4.6.1
• Android Studio Version: 2022.2.1 Patch 2

Additional context
Although my app is not running the latest version of the CT SDK, it does appear that the referenced file & functions are using the same code as the version that I'm running (4.6.1), so this bug appears to still affect the latest versions as well

[piyush-kukadiya]

@henryglendening-hh Thanks for reporting. We will check this internally and inform here with our findings.

[Henry Glendening]

Thank you @piyush-kukadiya! Do you have any updates on this so far?

[Anush-Shand]

@henryglendening-hh we were able to reproduce this issue and have found a potential fix which will be a part of the next release. A potential work around till then could be using the resume and suspend in-app functionality before and after launching an activity as required. The documentation for the same could be found here
https://developer.clevertap.com/docs/android-in-app-notifications#control-in-app-notifications

[Henry Glendening]

@Anush-Shand Thank you for the update and good to hear! We'll look forward to the next release and will take a look at this workaround in the meantime. Thanks much!