In-app message integration

This reference article covers how to integrate in-app messaging in your Android or FireOS application.

In-app messages help you get content to your users without interrupting their day with a push notification. Customized and tailored in-app messages enhance the user experience and help your audience get the most value from your app. With various layouts and customization tools to choose from, in-app messages engage your users more than ever before.

To see examples of in-app messages, check out our case studies.

In-app message types

Braze offers several default in-app message types, each customizable with messages, images, Font Awesome icons, click actions, analytics, editable styling, and color schemes. The currently available types are:

• Slideup
• Modal
• Full
• HTML

It is also possible to define your own custom in-app message view.

All in-app messages implement the IInAppMessage interface, which defines all in-app messages’ basic behavior and traits. InAppMessageBase is an abstract class that implements IInAppMessage and provides the foundational in-app message implementation. All in-app message classes are subclasses of InAppMessageBase.

In addition, there is a subinterface of IInAppMessage called IInAppMessageImmersive, which adds click action and analytics enabled buttons, as well as header text and a close button.

InAppMessageImmersiveBase is an abstract class that implements IInAppMessageImmersive and provides the foundational immersive in-app message implementation. Modal in-app messages are a subclass of InAppMessageImmersiveBase.

HTML in-app messages are InAppMessageHtml instances, which implement IInAppMessageHtml, another subclass of IInAppMessage.

Expected behaviors by message type

These are what it looks like for your users to open one of our default in-app message types.

• slideup
• modal
• full screen
• custom html

Defining custom in-app message types

The slideup in-app message object extends InAppMessageBase. The full and modal type messages extends InAppMessageImmersiveBase. Extending one of these classes gives you the option of adding custom functionality to your locally generated in-app messages.

Integration

Step 1: Braze in-app message manager registration

In-app message display is managed by the BrazeInAppMessageManager class. Every activity in your app must be registered with the BrazeInAppMessageManager to allow it to add in-app message views to the view hierarchy. There are two ways to accomplish this:

Activity lifecycle callback integration (recommended)

The activity lifecycle callback integration handles in-app message registration automatically; no extra integration is required. This is the recommended integration for handling in-app message registration.

Manual in-app message registration

First, in your Application.onCreate(), call ensureSubscribedToInAppMessageEvents():

• java
• kotlin

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BrazeInAppMessageManager.getInstance().ensureSubscribedToInAppMessageEvents(context);

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BrazeInAppMessageManager.getInstance().ensureSubscribedToInAppMessageEvents(context)

Next, in every activity where in-app messages can be shown, registerInAppMessageManager() should be called in that activity’s onResume():

• java
• kotlin

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@Override
public void onResume() {
  super.onResume();
  // Registers the BrazeInAppMessageManager for the current Activity. This Activity will now listen for
  // in-app messages from Braze.
  BrazeInAppMessageManager.getInstance().registerInAppMessageManager(activity);
}

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public override fun onResume() {
  super.onResume()
  // Registers the BrazeInAppMessageManager for the current Activity. This Activity will now listen for
  // in-app messages from Braze.
  BrazeInAppMessageManager.getInstance().registerInAppMessageManager(this)
}

Lastly, in every activity where registerInAppMessageManager() was called, unregisterInAppMessageManager() should be called in that activity’s onPause():

• java
• kotlin

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@Override
public void onPause() {
  super.onPause();
  // Unregisters the BrazeInAppMessageManager for the current Activity.
  BrazeInAppMessageManager.getInstance().unregisterInAppMessageManager(activity);
}

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public override fun onPause() {
  super.onPause()
  // Unregisters the BrazeInAppMessageManager.
  BrazeInAppMessageManager.getInstance().unregisterInAppMessageManager(this)
}

Step 2: In-app message manager blocklist (optional)

In your integration, you may require that certain activities in your app should not show in-app messages. The activity lifecycle callback integration provides an easy way to accomplish this.

The following sample code adds two activities to the in-app message registration blocklist, SplashActivity and SettingsActivity:

• java
• kotlin

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public class MyApplication extends Application {
  @Override
  public void onCreate() {
    super.onCreate();
    Set<Class> inAppMessageBlocklist = new HashSet<>();
    inAppMessageBlocklist.add(SplashActivity.class);
    inAppMessageBlocklist.add(SettingsActivity.class);
    registerActivityLifecycleCallbacks(new BrazeActivityLifecycleCallbackListener(inAppMessageBlocklist));
  }
}

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class MyApplication : Application() {
  override fun onCreate() {
    super.onCreate()
    val inAppMessageBlocklist = HashSet<Class<*>>()
    inAppMessageBlocklist.add(SplashActivity::class.java)
    inAppMessageBlocklist.add(SettingsActivity::class.java)
    registerActivityLifecycleCallbacks(BrazeActivityLifecycleCallbackListener(inAppMessageBlocklist))
  }
}