Getting started with Apteligent for Windows takes just three easy steps:
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Create the app. Log in to Apteligent and create a new Windows application. You'll need a Crittercism account to create the app listing; don't worry, it's free to sign up and we don't send spam.
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Download the library from NuGet. The package is called Crittercism, and is downloadable using the standard procedure. Note: installing Windows 8 NuGet packages requires a recent version of NuGet; you might have to upgrade. NuGet 2.2.31210 worked for us.
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Instrument your app. After the NuGet installation completes, Crittercism will be available under the CrittercismSDK namespace. Obtain your App Id from the app's settings page (e.g. 50807ba33a47481dd5000002) and add a call to CrittercismSDK.Crittercism.Init() with your app id, to the app's initialization code (you'll probably want to do this in your Application_Launching()).
That's it! The Crittercism.Init() call installed error collection and tracked session start (app loads). The full API reference follows.
All Crittercism calls take place to a global singleton available in CrittercismSDK.Crittercism.
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Init: initialize the library. Installs the basic Crittercism functionality, including app load and unhandled exception tracking. For simple apps, placing a single Init() call in the code is all that's required to use Crittercism.
- Inputs: The application's app id, available from the "Settings" page on the Crittercism website.
- Returns: None
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LeaveBreadcrumb(): Leave a textual description of what's going on in the app, useful for remote debugging. Examples: "Clicked the red button", "Character leveded up", "Document saved". Crittercism marks the time each breadcrumb was created, and uploads the full list of breadcrumbs (with times) to the server if a crash occurs. Breadcrumbs are limited to/truncated at 140 characters.
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LogHandledException(Exception e): Record the occurrance of a handled exception.
- Inputs: Takes the exception that occurred, will save a detailed stack trace and metadata log of the issue for later analysis.
Crittercism "metadata" is a set of arbitrary key/value pairs attached to a user's session. Metadata is useful for tracking demographic information about the user (email address, username) or various session parameters (level of a game, points, etc.) Crittercism automatically sets many pieces of system metadata when a crash occurs, including memory and disk use, operating system version, mobile carrier, and a handful of other data.
To set metadata, use Crittercism.SetValue(string value, string key) to set custom data or Crittercism.SetUsername(string username) to set the current username.
You can optionally expose a capability in your application to allow your users to opt out of providing data to Crittercism. Use SetOptOutStatus(boolean optOut) and GetOptOutStatus(). How and where you expose this facility is up to you.