Custom setApiHost ignored in 1.20.0

[apuig]

Describe the bug
After upgrading from 1.19.2 to 1.20.0, our tests started failing.

Upon investigation, we found that the value provided to setApiHost is being overwritten by the settings retrieved from the cdhHost/v1/projects/XXX/settings. If we simulate a failure retrieving settings, the default apiHost it also used:

analytics-kotlin.properties        
segment.settings={"integrations"\:{"Segment.io"\:{"apiKey"\:"XXX","apiHost"\:"api.segment.io/v1"}}}

To Reproduce

1. Instantiate the client using ConfigurationBuilder#setApiHost to set a custom endpoint (e.g., a mock endpoint for testing)
2. Send some events
3. Observe that the events are sent to the default apiHost (api.segment.io/v1), rather than the endpoint specified

Expected behavior
The configuration option provided via setApiHost should take precedence and be respected.

Platform (please complete the following information):

• Library Version in use: 1.20.0
• Platform being tested: java server
• Integrations in use: -

Additional context
We managed to work around this issue by also mocking the settings requests to include the desired apiHost.

[wenxi-zeng]

hi @apuig, thanks for reporting this. but the behavior is desired. the remote settings always takes priority. this is consistent across all of our libraries. the previous version also prioritize remote settings. but there was a bug in the previous version that if the SDK failed to fetch remote settings (intermittent network or other network failure), it uses an empty settings (which is not right, the cached settings should be used), thereby causing this condition to fail and the configuration.apiHost to be used.

so for your use case, there are 2 options:

1. update your custom endpoints to return an empty settings or settings with apiHost being null
2. use the requestFactory to properly configure your proxy or test endpoints

[apuig]

Hi @wenxi-zeng, thank you for your prompt reply!

After reviewing the test analytics should respect remote apiHost and the associated PR, indeed, this is the expected behavior. However, I still have a few concerns.

I couldn't find any public documentation explaining the purpose of the v1/projects/$writeKey/settings interaction. From what I gather, it seems primarily intended for plugin configuration. Since Segment itself is implemented as a Destination plugin, I assume it’s subject to these settings as well. However, I'm unsure what role the plan and metrics elements in the settings JSON payload.

We're coming from the simpler analytics-java as the segment client, our only interest is Segment.io ingestion. We neither need nor want dynamic configuration on the client, nor do we want to enable any other plugins. Our settings would list only Segment.io under integrations. Given our use case, I’m struggling to see the value of setting the apiHost from remote configuration, especially since I'm also unsure how to configure this via the UI.

I do feel that the configuration documentation for apiHost and defaultSettings could be clearer and may even be a bit misleading right now for this context.

Thanks again for your support. Any clarification you can provide would be very helpful!

[wenxi-zeng]

hi @apuig, yes, there was a place in Segment dashboard -> source settings where you could change the apiHost. I guess it's been turned off now. the plan and metrics are reserved but not being used in the SDK. so you should see them always as empty fields.

we are aware of that there are things the SDK can optimize for server use cases (see the table here for c#, but the same applies to kotlin). it's in our plan. we just haven't got chance to it because other priorities.

yes, the documentation should be clearer. the description was there before we implemented the request factory. so it's a little bit outdated now. I will open a ticket for our docs team to get it clarified. thanks for calling it out!