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React Native SDK Troubleshooting

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Important

Visual Studio App Center is scheduled for retirement on March 31, 2025. While you can continue to use Visual Studio App Center until it is fully retired, there are several recommended alternatives that you may consider migrating to.

Learn more about support timelines and alternatives.

'React/RCTDefines.h' file not found

This error appears when RN core libraries aren't referenced correctly, which can be caused by different kinds of integrating or linking issues. It often happens when you have your dependencies linked using relative path in a podfile, rather than statically in a project.

Our linking script supports only the standard way of linking pods, so to resolve the problem:

  1. Replace the dependencies in your Podfile with relative linking paths:

    Before:

    pod 'AppCenter/Analytics', '~> 1.14.0'
pod 'AppCenter/Crashes', '~> 1.14.0'
pod 'AppCenterReactNativeShared', '~> 1.13.0'

    After:

    pod 'appcenter', path: '../node_modules/appcenter/ios'
pod 'appcenter-analytics', path: '../node_modules/appcenter-analytics/ios'
pod 'appcenter-crashes', path: '../node_modules/appcenter-crashes/ios'

  2. Run pod install from iOS folder.

  3. Inside AppDelegate.m, replace imports:

    Before:

    #import <AppCenterReactNative/AppCenterReactNative.h>
#import <AppCenterReactNativeAnalytics/AppCenterReactNativeAnalytics.h>
#import <AppCenterReactNativeCrashes/AppCenterReactNativeCrashes.h>

    After:

    #import "AppCenterReactNative.h"
#import "AppCenterReactNativeAnalytics.h"
#import "AppCenterReactNativeCrashes.h"

  4. Remove AppCenter dependencies from the project (right-click the dependency > Remove dependency).

    • Select <YOUR_APP> -> Libraries and remove next files:
      • AppCenterReactNative.xcodeproj
      • AppCenterReactNativeAnalytics.xcodeproj
      • AppCenterReactNativeCrashes.xcodeproj
    • Open your project settings and under General tab in the Linked Frameworks and Libraries section remove new items referencing target libraries removed on the previous step:
      • libAppCenterReactNative.a
      • libAppCenterReactNativeAnalytics.a
      • libAppCenterReactNativeCrashes.a
    • Modify Header Search Paths to remove headers from the AppCenter React Native plugins projects. Open your project settings and under Build Settings tab in the Header Search Paths section remove the following locations for header files:
      • $(SRCROOT)/../node_modules/appcenter/ios/AppCenterReactNative
      • $(SRCROOT)/../node_modules/appcenter-analytics/ios/AppCenterReactNativeAnalytics
      • $(SRCROOT)/../node_modules/appcenter-crashes/ios/AppCenterReactNativeCrashes

If you have yarn installed on your machine, react-native init {myapp} will initialize your app and install dependencies using yarn rather than npm. If you see the following error message when running react-native link, chances are App Center dependencies are installed from npm install {package} instead of yarn add {package} so that npm and yarn are mixed during installation.

Command `link` unrecognized. Make sure that you have run `npm install` and that you are inside a react-native project.

In this case, run npm install and try react-native link again.

Build error such as 'AppCenterCrashes/MSACErrorReport.h' file not found

React-Native 0.60 and above

The likely cause is the conflict between major package versions because of a breaking change in our Apple SDK.

  1. Make sure that all appcenter packages use the same major version. Update them with npm install or yarn if needed.

  2. Go to ios folder of your project and remove Podfile.lock and the Pods folder.

  3. Run pod install --repo-update in your ios folder.

  4. Verify that Podfile.lock contains appcenter dependencies of the same major version.

React Native lower than 0.60

One possible cause is when running react-native link without CocoaPods installed.

To confirm the cause, execute react-native link, and in the logs, check for the following line:

Could not configure AppCenter for iOS. Error Reason - spawn pod ENOENT

This line is located in the following section of the logs:

Added code to initialize iOS AppCenter SDK in ios/TestApp/AppDelegate.m
Installing Cocoapods dependencies...
Could not configure AppCenter for iOS. Error Reason - spawn pod ENOENT
rnpm-install info Platform 'ios' module appcenter-analytics is already linked
rnpm-install info Platform 'android' module appcenter-analytics is already linked

If you see that error, make sure the pod command from CocoaPods is available in your system's PATH environment variable.

After you fix your CocoaPods installation, run pod install in the ios folder to fix your project.

If you see the following CocoaPods error message during react-native link, chances are your local clone (~/.cocoapods/repos on your machine) of the CocoaPods spec repo isn't up to date.

Analyzing dependencies [!] Unable to find a specification for AppCenterReactNativeShared (~> {version})

Run pod repo update to update the spec repo, and try react-native link again. For more information of CocoaPods commands, see CocoaPods command line reference.

How to upgrade app using App Center SDK from React Native 0.59 to 0.60

For upgrading React Native to the version 0.60.0, use the following command:

react-native upgrade 0.60.0

Note

If during an upgrade you get this error Command failed: git status -s fatal: not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git, perform the next steps:

git init
git add .
git commit -m "Upgrade react-native"

After you finish upgrading you may remove the .git directory.

Update React Native iOS

  1. Open Podfile and replace App Center dependencies on the following line:

    use_native_modules!

  2. Run the following command:

    pod repo update

How to update React Native SDK to the latest version

If you've already integrated our SDK into your application and want to upgrade to a newer version of the SDK, follow the following steps to upgrade:

  1. npm uninstall --save appcenter appcenter-analytics appcenter-crashes to uninstall old App Center packages.

  2. npm install --save-exact appcenter appcenter-analytics appcenter-crashes to install latest App Center packages.

  3. pod repo update to make sure your CocoaPods spec repo is up to date.

  4. react-native link.

Tip

If you see error message similar to the following CocoaPods error message during react-native link, delete the auto-generated Podfile.lock in your ios folder and run react-native link again.

[!] Unable to satisfy the following requirements:

- `AppCenter/Core (= 1.0.0)` required by `Podfile.lock`
- `AppCenter/Core (= 1.0.0)` required by `AppCenter/Crashes (1.0.0)`
- `AppCenter/Core (= 1.0.0)` required by `AppCenter/Analytics (1.0.0)`
- `AppCenter/Core (= 1.0.1)` required by `AppCenterReactNativeShared (1.0.1)`

Migration from jCenter to Maven Central

Due to termination of jCenter support all our assemblies were moved to the Maven Central repository. To use App Center, you need to add mavenCentral() to the repository in your Gradle file like below:

repositories {
   google()
   mavenCentral()
}

Protect the App Center secret value

The app_secret is an identifier of your app, it's required to know which app the traffic applies to and it can not be used to retrieve or edit existing data. If your app_secret is exposed, the biggest risk is sending bad data to your app, but it won't have an effect on the security of the data.

To retrieve any sensitive data, you'd need to provide an app/user token, which is generated on the client’s side. There's no way to make data on the client's side completely secure.

You can improve your app's security by using an environment variable to inject the app secret into your code. That way, the secret isn't visible in your code.