Skip to main content

Privacy and breadcrumbs (7.x Beta)

7.x Beta

This page documents the 7.x beta line. Breadcrumb filtering is new in 7.0.0-beta6; there is no equivalent on the 6.x stable line.

What breadcrumbs are​

Breadcrumbs are short structured records of what the app was doing in the lead-up to an issue — navigation, taps, lifecycle changes, network requests, system events. They are aggregated into the report timeline and surface in the Bugsee dashboard.

The 7.x SDK ships four built-in breadcrumb sources:

SourceExamples
AppApplication lifecycle (onCreate, foreground/background), low-memory warnings.
UIActivity / Fragment navigation, dialog open/close, gesture events.
NetworkHTTP request lifecycle entries — host, path, method, status, mechanism.
SystemConnectivity, battery, thermal, orientation, configuration changes.

Breadcrumb capture is on by default and is gated by the CaptureBreadcrumbs option — see configuration.

Disabling breadcrumb collection​

To turn off breadcrumb capture entirely, set CaptureBreadcrumbs to false in your manifest or programmatically:

<meta-data android:name="com.bugsee.option.capture.breadcrumbs"
           android:value="false" />

Most apps should keep capture on and use the filter below to scrub or drop only the entries that matter.

Filtering breadcrumbs​

Bugsee.setBreadcrumbFilter(EventFilter<Breadcrumb>) registers a single filter that is invoked for every breadcrumb the SDK is about to record — regardless of source. Return the (possibly mutated) breadcrumb to keep it; return null to drop it.

The filter shape mirrors setLogEventFilter and setNetworkEventFilter — same generic EventFilter<T> interface, single synchronous method, no completion callback.

Producer-side URL sanitization removed

Before 7.0.0-beta6, HTTP-request breadcrumbs had hardcoded URL sanitization baked into the producer (query-string masking, * substitution on certain segments). That logic has been removed: HTTP-request URLs are now emitted verbatim and you opt into masking, PII redaction, or drop semantics through this filter. If you depended on the old producer-side behavior, install a filter that reproduces it.

The Breadcrumb interface (com.bugsee.library.contracts.exchange.Breadcrumb) exposes:

MethodPurpose
getCategory() / setCategory(String)Source category — typical values: "navigation", "user", "system", "business", "error".
getType() / setType(String)Sub-type within the category (for example http_request, gesture, lifecycle).
getMessage() / setMessage(String)Human-readable description.
getLevel() / setLevel(Breadcrumb.Level)One of DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR, FATAL.
getData() / setData(Map) / setData(key, value)Free-form key/value context map. HTTP-request breadcrumbs put url, method, status_code, mechanism, etc. here.
getTimestamp() / setTimestamp(long)Wall-clock milliseconds.

Examples​

Mask query-string tokens on HTTP-request breadcrumbs​

import com.bugsee.library.Bugsee;
import com.bugsee.library.contracts.exchange.Breadcrumb;

Bugsee.setBreadcrumbFilter(crumb -> {
    Map<String, Object> data = crumb.getData();
    if (data != null) {
        Object urlObj = data.get("url");
        if (urlObj instanceof String) {
            String url = (String) urlObj;
            if (url.contains("token=")) {
                crumb.setData("url",
                        url.replaceAll("token=[^&\\s]+", "token=[REDACTED]"));
            }
        }
    }
    return crumb; // return null to drop the breadcrumb entirely
});

Drop noisy breadcrumb categories​

Bugsee.setBreadcrumbFilter(crumb -> {
    if ("system".equals(crumb.getCategory())
            && "battery".equals(crumb.getType())) {
        return null; // drop battery-state pings
    }
    return crumb;
});

Downgrade level for known-noisy entries​

Bugsee.setBreadcrumbFilter(crumb -> {
    String message = crumb.getMessage();
    if (message != null && message.startsWith("[heartbeat]")) {
        crumb.setLevel(Breadcrumb.Level.DEBUG);
    }
    return crumb;
});

Recording custom breadcrumbs​

note

Bugsee.addBreadcrumb(...) is new in 7.0.0-beta7.

The four built-in sources cover most apps, but you can also record domain-specific breadcrumbs — business checkpoints ("checkout.paid", "trial.expired"), navigation events from a wrapper SDK, or breadcrumbs forwarded from a non-Android subsystem — into the same timeline:

import com.bugsee.library.Bugsee;
import com.bugsee.library.contracts.exchange.Breadcrumb;

Breadcrumb crumb = /* construct or obtain a Breadcrumb */;
Bugsee.addBreadcrumb(crumb);

Custom breadcrumbs are routed through the same filter the SDK applies to built-in ones — the filter you registered with setBreadcrumbFilter(...) will run on every call, with the same semantics described above.

The call no-ops silently when the SDK has not been launched, when CaptureBreadcrumbs is disabled, or when breadcrumb is null.

Notes​

  • The filter is synchronous — it runs on the recording thread before the breadcrumb is persisted. Keep it allocation-light and fast; do not perform I/O.
  • Mutate the breadcrumb in place and return the same instance. Returning a different Breadcrumb implementation is not supported.
  • The filter is invoked for all sources. Use getCategory() / getType() to scope your logic per source (for example, only touch HTTP-request entries by checking category == "navigation" and type == "http_request").
  • Network events (the entries surfaced in the network tab of the report) are scrubbed separately via setNetworkEventFilter. The breadcrumb filter only affects the breadcrumb timeline.