I would like to send a message from my web server to my iOS app in any state, including 'Not running'. Does iOS provide any system level functionality that can do this?
The closest I have found is Push Notification Background Download, but I don't want the user seeing the notification.
What I am trying to implement is the opposite of a typical geofence. I want to notify the user when something happens but only if they're within a certain area. i.e. Not when they enter a geofence.
I was hoping I could notify the app, check the location and then notify the user if they're in the area. Otherwise ignore the event.
Related
I'm trying to make an App that's exactly like WhatsApp, so far the biggest limitation is that when a user re-opens the App after a while, and goes to a Conversation View, new Messages that were sent during the time the App was in Background/Suspended or Terminated states have to be recovered from a Server (API), and this causes a potential delay for new messages showing up in the Conversation View.
How can I achieve permanent Sync of an App with a server API? I'm kind of sure apps like WhatsApp manage to do this, because Messages never appear to be downloaded whenever you re-open the App after a while, right?
What is the right way to sort of Mimic this type of behavior? I really want to learn how to perform this kind of "advanced" synching and I don't know where to get started. Again, my goal is to try to avoid server-downloads of new Messages when a user re-enters a Conversation Viewfor example (because that would be bad UX)
Thanks in advance!
Your app will need push notifications. This is a must have for apps like this.
On the server, when you know that there are new messages, send a push notification to the app. This will let the app know that there are messages to read. At this point the app can badge the app icon, pop an alert and show on the notification screen. The user controls how notifications appear.
Details about notifications here:
https://developer.apple.com/notifications/
Your app can load all messages when it gets the notification.
iOS apps do have some limited options for background processes: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/iPhone/Conceptual/iPhoneOSProgrammingGuide/BackgroundExecution/BackgroundExecution.html
I want to develop an app, but before I actually start developing, I've been doing some research so that i can be sure it's going to work in the way I'd like to do this.
You can imagine the app as a kind of news app, where the user can indicate whether he wants to receive push notifications, and may also indicate that he only wants to receive a push notification if it is in X distance from his current location.
And this is probally a problem on IOS, On android it would be no problem if a push notification came in to read the current position of the user and settings and then show the push notification or not.
As far as I've read this is a problem on iOS, the system receives the push and the app can not respond to it unless the user clicks on it.
Theres also another problem about closing an app on IOS, ideally a app should not be closed (swiped out) by the user because this would be a force close on IOS.
From ive seen most users still swipe out apps, and this would mean that my app cannot run background tasks anymore.
This is what i thougt about:
Send Silent push, app download data on the background -> Check if this meets the user settings, if so show a local notification. (30 sec time to handle, but do not know if it is possible to throw a local push here too.)
The app sends data on the background over the user's current position before sending a push, the server checks for which apps it should be sent (actually no solution, too much data usage as it may be that the user is only one Specific location, need a good server if the app is used on thousands of devices.).
Does anyone have any idea how to handle this problem?
User has an iOS app in his device and he walks into a physical store. I would like to identify that user programmatically within the app and throw him push notifications like Welcome message and based on his usage history or his level, send him coupons etc., on entering the store. He has to receive these messages automatically. In what all ways this is possible? And most important thing is that this needs to work in all states of the app (foreground, background, not running, suspended). Appreciate any quick inputs here.
Since you tagged your question with iBeacon, here's a summary of what's possible with that technology. In general, you can do what you want, but there are some caveats.
If you install an iBeacon in the store and make the app look for that iBeacon using [locationManager startMonitoringForRegion: iBeaconRegion], your app will get a callback whenever that beacon is first seen. In this callback, you can make it send a local notification to the user (or by making a web service call, you can make it send a push notification to the user). This can happen in all of the app states you mention, using this definition of these app states.
The situations where this will not work is if:
The phone is turned off
Bluetooth is turned off
The app has never been launched since installation
The user has stopped the app from the task manager and has not restarted it since then
The user has denied the app permission to access your location
The callback to your app will happen as soon as the iBeacon is detected by the phone. This may be as far as 150 feet from the iBeacon if it is detected quickly. It is also possible that detection will be delayed by a few minutes until iOS enters its next Bluetooth LE scan cycle. Once the callback takes place, local notifications can take place immediately. Push notifications will probably have a delay of several minutes more.
The message you send to the user will show up on the lock screen, and if the user gestures to it, you can launch a specific part of the app.
A very simple task that took me 30 minutes to implement on an android.
A web server sends a message to device. Without user interaction a receipt is sent back. User understands that this is a desired behavior. When user opens the app he/she can send additional acknowledgement.
My understanding is that as long as I am not using location service I cannot run app in background continuously (or periodically). Push notifications will require user interaction, otherwise it's just a badge and a message.
This seems like a trivial problem but makes my head hurt and want me to give up.
Is Enterprise subscription the only way for me to get the app to our company users?
First you need to ask user permission to send PUSH notifications. Once the user agrees for you to send PUSH notifications to his device, you need to get the device ID and store it in your servers. This is the FIRST phase of PUSH-NOTIFICATION
In the next phase (SECOND phase), lets say you want to notify the user about something, what you do is get all deviceIDs for that user (he might have registered more than 1 iOS device) and send some X message to his device(s) leveraging apple's PUSH infrastructure. You need to pass the deviceID's to Apple (along with a bunch of other stuff) as this is how it identifies which device gets this X message.
Also initially while registering for PUSH, you need to write a little code to configure how your PUSH notification will look like. Would it have SOUND, BADGE, MESSAGE etc.
For all this to happen you as a app developer do not need to concern whether you app is ACTIVE or not. iOS takes care of it. After the initial PUSH registration the user too is not involved. You dont need to run your app in the background nor do you need to register for continuous location updates.
Have I understood your question correctly?
I am writing an application that utilizes Apple's Push Notification Service. Some of the push notifications are based on the users location and should only be delivered if the user is a certain distance from an object. I don't want to continually update the user's position to my server and do the check that way, first, because of security reasons and second, to cut down on the network usage. Is there a way, when the push notification is received by the device, to do a check before the user is notified, and if it doesn't meet the criteria, discard the notification? Thanks for the help!
Nope, sadly you can't execute any code on the client side without the user clicking on the notification when the app is not launched. You'll have to do your check server-side to decide wether or not sending a push.
Push notifications that are received while you app is not running (the most typical case) is outside your control. Once they are sent, they will be received and shown to the user (assuming the user has granted permissions)
You do have control over push notifications if they are received while your app is running.
Maybe you could use local notifications (notifications that are generated and received from user's device) instead. You would have full control over when they are generated.
Bear in mind, background processing in apps is disallowed except for 4 things
Location tracking (You can subscribe to trigger code when user changes geolocation)
Alarms
Playing music
Voice over IP
Anything outside these cannot be executed in the background.
Starting with iOS7, your code can be run, I quote, "roughly the same time that the user sees the notification":
Multitasking Enhancements
Apps that use push notifications to notify the user that new content
is available can fetch the content in the background. To support this
mode, include the UIBackgroundModes key with the remote-notification
value in your app’s Info.plist file. You must also implement the
application:didReceiveRemoteNotification:fetchCompletionHandler:
method in your app delegate.
See more info here:
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/releasenotes/General/WhatsNewIniOS/Articles/iOS7.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40013162-SW10
and here:
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/iPhone/Conceptual/iPhoneOSProgrammingGuide/BackgroundExecution/BackgroundExecution.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40007072-CH4-SW57
I haven't tried it yet but I wonder if you send a push notification payload which doesn't have the standard "alert", "badge" values in "apns" but in a custom value, it would still call your code but without displaying the push notification.