About Attributes

Tags versus Attributes

Consider the example below — you want to target fans of the actor Chris Pine. To accomplish this, you specify an audience of users with the TagMetadata that you can associate with channels or named users for audience segmentation. Generally, they are descriptive terms indicating user preferences or other categorizations, e.g., wine_enthusiast or weather_alerts_los_angeles. Tags are case-sensitive. chris_pine. Either a user has this tag, or not. Note: These API examples can also be used in the dashboard.

{
   "audience": {
      "tag": "chris_pine"
   }
}

But let’s say you wanted to target fans of All The Chrises: Chris Pine, Chris Evans, Chris Pratt, and Chris Hemsworth. With Attributes, you can set your audience to target users whose favorite_actor Attribute contains the value chris, and you will reach all the Chris fans.

{
   "audience": {
      "attribute": "favorite_actor",
      "operator": "contains",
      "value": "chris"
   }
}

It’s a silly example, but hopefully you can begin to see the power of comparison operators for Attributes.

Attribute types

User information can be stored in an Attribute as text or as a number, date, or JSON object. Each Attribute type is named for the schema that defines what values it accepts. Text, Number, and Date schemas are determined by Airship. You provide your own schema for JSON Attributes.

Values accepted for each Attribute type:

JSON Attributes

JSON Attributes are data objects containing one or more key-value pairs and arrays. You can think of them as collections of information you can assign to a user. Example use cases:

• Retailer — Store user preferences and send sale or discount messages about items you know a user will be interested in and with personalized content for their preferred brands, colors, etc.

• Airline — Store a user’s booking information and send confirmation and update messages leading up to, during, and after their trip. Messages would contain their confirmation code, flight numbers, origin and destination airport codes, and departure and arrival times.

For each JSON Attribute, you create a template for the structure and what data to store. The template is the schema and the data is defined as properties. Using the above airline use case, you could have an Attribute with ID reservation and create a schema for the confirmation code and lists of like data types (departures and arrivals) with properties for flight numbers, airport codes, and times.

In addition to the properties defined in your provided schema, each JSON Attribute has a property exp for its expiration date, represented as the number of seconds since the epoch (January 1st, 1970). After expiration, Airship ignores the Attribute where used in segmentation and personalization. When setting a JSON Attribute on a user, if a value for exp is not provided, Airship automatically sets a value of 90 days from the current date and time.

Each instance of setting a JSON Attribute on a user is defined by an instance ID, which is used as a reference for the property values set for that user.

The following describes associating the data with users and targeting and personalization options:

Categories, data sources, and setup

Attributes can come from the Airship SDKs, users, and you.

Data sources, descriptions, and setup per Attribute category:

Personalization

You can use Attributes in a message body to personalize content for each user. See Personalizing messages using Attributes.