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Hosted Data Layer

Supported Platforms

The following platforms support hosted data layer:

How it Works

Hosted data layer facilitates the use of statically hosted data for the purpose of supplementing the dynamic data layer of your mobile app or for hosting JSON configuration files. While the data layer implemented in your mobile app is useful in capturing real-time information, it can be a challenge to include additional valuable information from offline systems. Hosted data layer provides a convenient mechanism to upload static data to the Tealium mCDN, where it can be accessed by your mobile app to enrich data or power an application that uses JSON files.

Tealium for mobile supports a hosted data layer which stores certain data layer items remotely to be downloaded by your app. This feature is useful in any scenario where data layer attributes are not available in your native code, but can be made available from your organization. For example, your e-commerce system might have product attributes such as product_is_in_stock or product_has_free_shipping that are not easily accessed in native code, but can be uploaded as hosted data layer files.

A lookup variable identifies which variable the data layer uses for fetching the corresponding hosted data layer object. The hosted data layer data items persist for 7 days by default, and are re-downloaded from the CDN after expiration.

Additional Information:

Configuration

Prior to initializing the Tealium library, identify and configure the hosted data layer keys (lookup variables) by setting the following property. The key values are used by the hosted data layer module to retrieve data layer IDs

By default, data persists for 7 days in the hosted data layer data, and is re-downloaded from the CDN after expiration. Configure an expiration time on hosted data layer data by setting the following property.

Setting a shorter expiration time reduces mobile device battery life due to increased network requests.

Use Case: Supplementing Product Data

Scenario:

  • You have a database of information for the products you sell in your mobile app.
  • The basic product attributes, such as ID, Price, and Name, are readily available to your mobile app and currently populated in the data layer.
  • An offline system that is not available to your mobile app contains additional product attributes that you want to add to the data layer, such as SKU, In Store Availability, Free Shipping Status, and Brand.

The following steps describe the implementation process for this use case:

  1. Identify lookup variables
    The data layer contains product_id, which is also an identifier in the offline data and a good candidate for a lookup variable.
  2. Create and upload hosted data layer objects
    Export the offline product data into JSON files, which are named according to the expected values of product_id. For example, if the data layer contains product_id=["PRD123"] , then a matching hosted data layer file named PRD123.js is created. Create a separate file for each product.

The following table shows the end result of applying the enrichment process.

Enrichment Result
Data layer utag_data { "page_type":"product", "product_id":["PRD123"]}
Hosted data layer object PRD123.js {"has_free_shipping":["0"], "has_instore_pickup":["1"]}
Merged data layer {"page_type":"product", "product_id":["PRD123"], "has_free_shipping":["0"], "has_instore_pickup":["1"]}

Troubleshooting

The following are troubleshooting tips:

  • Be aware that track calls where the dispatch contains hosted data layer components may be sent out of order, due to the additional time required to retrieve items from the CDN. This doesn’t apply if a valid cache exists for an item, since the CDN lookup isn’t required.
  • If there are any server or connectivity errors when the hosted data layer request is made, the request retries up to 5 times. After 5 failed attempts, the track call is sent without the hosted data layer data.
  • If a valid record on the CDN is not found for an item, the track call is sent without the hosted data layer data.
  • If there is no valid cache available for the hosted data layer item being requested, the first request is queued and only sent when the queue is flushed. This behavior is automatic when the maximum number of batched events is reached or if the app is in the background.
Trace
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