Okay, so today I wanted to mess around with something called “hockey marking.” I’d heard about it before, and it sounded interesting, so I figured, why not give it a shot?
First, I needed to figure out what the heck it actually was. It had something to do with gathering usage stats and crash reports. I hit up the internet and started searching around. I found a couple of different options. Some were paid, some were free. I’m all about keeping it simple, so, I went the DIY route.
Getting Started
I started by creating some sample data. I created a function to get the device model,system version and some other info, package them up in a dictionary.
The data looks like this:
- Device Model: iPhone14,5
- System Version: iOS 16.5
- App Version: 1.0.1
I built my app, and run the function, I check the console. My data shows up nice and *!
Actually Sending the Data
Next, I thought, now, to get it to my server.I need to collect these data and send it some where I can check,So, I created the server side.
Putting It All Together
After all the data were saved to my own server, I start to build a dashboard to show all the data. It’s quite simple just some HTML tags, and some basic js code. But, it works!
So, that’s my little adventure into hockey marking. It wasn’t too complicated, and it’s something I can definitely see myself using in future projects. It’s always good to know what’s going on with your apps out in the wild!
