This is in response of an effort in order to implement an app in a way, so that I could run some code at specific interval of time i-e Morning 9:00 am daily.
Lets take an example of an Alarm.
If user is allowed to set a time interval, during which he is going to remain busy, so now after setting two - three intervals for his daily schedule.
After the app is suspended or in foreground, user needs a reminder before entering to and after getting out of the interval.
I need guidance for this problem in a way :
Local notifications for this situation in swift
Changing the mode of device from ringer to silent during that interval
OR
Accessing programatically 'Do not Disturb Me' feature of IOS
Your kind conveyance regarding this issue will be really productive for me.
Thanks.
Related
I am looking for solution to get data in background mode even app is terminated.
There are lots of tutorials and answers available for this questions, but my questions is different than other. I haven't find any proper solution on stackoverflow, so posted this question.
I have scenario which I can explain. I'm using realm database which store event date, name, time, address etc. Now the thing is that, I want to write a code which are execute in background, In this code I want to get all event data and compare their date with today's date. And based on days remaining between these days fire local notification to remind user about how many days are remaining for specific event.
I want to call this background fetch method exactly 8 AM in local time everyday.
I haven't write any code due to confused with Background fetch and implementation. Can anyone know how to implement this ?
Help will be appreciated.
I have got solution to fix issue. As per I have talked,
I want to write a code which are execute in background, In this code I
want to get all event data and compare their date with today's date.
And based on days remaining between these days fire local notification
to remind user about how many days are remaining for specific event.
So, when I getting response from API, I'm creating local notification for all events with unique id, which are fire and repeat daily at specific time, where I have display event time and remaining days of event.
Apple documentation states that there is no guarantee when background fetch is performed. It's up to the system to decide.
The system waits until network and power conditions are good, so you should be able to retrieve adequate amounts of data quickly.
The guaranteed way to wake your app is to send at 8 am VoIP push notification from the server. It is guaranteed that the app will be wakened upon receiving a push, and you'll be able to execute the jobs you need. For more details, https://medium.com/ios-expert-series-or-interview-series/voip-push-notifications-using-ios-pushkit-5bc4a8f4d587
It is not possible to wake up the app from suspended mode in iOS except with push notification (for this server has to send push notification).
This is something which is not documented anywhere. IMHO and experience with iOS, Apple must be recording user activities since the start of the iOS era. ScreenTime is a product of those recordings only that apple was able to create and visualize the data to present a user facing app that very beautifully restricts, manages and displays your activities. In WWDC 2018, it was even quoted that apple will even detect, if the user opens your app at let's say 9 PM daily before going to bed, iOS will allow every possible resource (battery, internet, processing time etc) to that app at 9 PM. But you need to understand your user activities before you do this. Let's take an example of:
News App:
A majority of users would check the news in the morning (If they are not instagram addicts). At this time even apple should be biased to open your app with background fetch. Unless of-course there is too much of a resource crunch
A Game: Many games allow provide a restriction time by calling it "recharge" or "re-fill" the energy of a character before user can play another round. This is done so that the addicted person would buy gems to remove that restriction and hence monetize the idea. But if you know that the refill process is completed before 8:00 AM in the morning or user plays your game daily at 8:00 AM configure background fetch accordingly.
Background fetch works with interval rather than specific time.
// Fetch data once an hour.
UIApplication.shared.setMinimumBackgroundFetchInterval(3600)
Lastly why don't you try silent push notifications? Based on your question, I think silent notification is enough to wake your app after a push notification from the server, download some data and do your calculation and provide a local notification.
My iOS app (which targets iOS 8.1+) use location services to determine if a user has entered a particular region during an event. Ideally I would like to enable the geofencing a little before the event and turn it off a little after the event completes. The problem is there is no guarantee the app is running an hour before the event so I turn on geofencing at the point the user registers for the event. This is not the best approach as it means the geofencing is on for much longer than it needs to be.
As far as I can tell, there is no way to "wake up" the app in the background at a scheduled time in iOS. I could use the push notification meant for updating content, but It's not clear to me if Apple would reject such a misuse of that notification.
Any suggestions?
I've been looking into this myself.
If you can arrange a push notification from your backend ("Silent push notification", aka "content-available"), it seems to be a good option. In real-world situations, this seems to give you the best control over the timing. Unfortunately, it won't work if the person doesn't have connectivity. Also, unfortunately, you need a backend that can queue events at a time (not just in response to an input.) If you have such a backend already, and your app is only useful to the user when they have network coverage anyway, this is probably the best option. It seems this an appropriate use of the technology, so Apple should approve.
Another option I'm trying is to use background fetch. You specify a "minimum interval" to avoid too much fetching. Try 50% of the remaining time-to-event as a minimum. Every time the app wakes up (whether in the foreground because the user opened it, or in the background because background-fetch opens it) you can calculate the time-to-next-event, update the fetch interval, or start the region monitoring. You are supposed to use "background fetch" to fetch information from a server, but there doesn't seem to be any requirement to poll a server, you could poll your internal data instead. I haven't fully tested this yet but it seems promising.
You can use significant location change monitoring, which I've read will wake up your app briefly every 15 minutes or less, and you can use the time/location information to decide whether to turn on the geofence. I think this would work well in combination with the above "background fetch": Many hours or days before the event you rely on background fetch, which you then use to turn on significant location change monitoring a few hours before the event. (There's speculation that geofencing is actually more battery efficient than significant change monitoring, but you could choose to assume that other apps on the user's device will already by watching for significant changes, in which case the marginal cost of your app adding itself to the list should be minimal.)
Putting them all together, you could create a sequence of
background fetch -> significant location monitoring -> geofencing
as the time gets closer.
There is also the CLVisit monitoring functionality, it's not understood very well, but supposedly uses less power and is called less frequently than significant location change monitoring. If the background fetch or silent remote notifications aren't working to wake up your app, give this a try, and please report back!
You can't (yet) do a silent content-available local notification (AFAICT). However, perhaps you can schedule up a local notification "Your event starts tomorrow" or something that convinces the user to click the option that starts the geofence. Here's a tutorial on it http://www.appcoda.com/local-notifications-ios8/, the response of action can be UIUserNotificationActivationMode.Background so your geofence can come on (if the user responds to the notification) without bringing the app to the foreground.
It's been 5 to 6 weeks since you asked, do you have your own answer already? Please let me know.
I'm creating an app that needs to fire local notifications for sunrise and sunset on a daily basis.
Sunrise and sunset times changes every day.
I want the registering of the local notifications to take place even if the user didn't open the app (i.e. a background task). So the user installs the app, sets his location (since sunrise and susnet calculations are location based) and then he knows he'll get notifications for sunrise and set every day without needing to open the app or being connected to the internet.
Ideally I need a background task for registering local notifications over a given period which runs at least once every period. "e.g. registers local notifications for the next week, which in that case I need it to run at least once a week".
None of the current background modes fit my case, I tried a background fetch, but since there're no data downloaded iOS stopped running my background task after a couple of days
I know I can use push notifications, but I don't want to unless it's my last option, cause I want the notification to take place even if the phone was not connected to the internet.
So how do you think I can tackle this? Is there something I'm missing?
Get Location for every ’n’ minutes in background. By Using beginBackgroundTaskWithExpirationHandler and NSTimer .it keeps app live in background.
So, You can schedule a localnotification in background.
For getting location update in background Refer the link
How do I get a background location update every n minutes in my iOS application?
(From iOS7 finite-length background task time reduced to 180 seconds. so you must fetch location within next 180 seconds.)
If user force quit the app. the app destroyed all the task . Use Significant location change or region monitoring to restart the Background task and get location for every ’n’ minutes.
I'm developing an iOS app, and I'm looking for a way to make a notification appear when a specific battery level is reached. So my app has to do that while in background.
I found a tutorial with local notification, but the only way to make it appear is to set up a precise date and time.
If you have informations about it, it'll be very sweet.
Thanks for your help !
There is no easy solution for this. You have to run time to time your app in order to achieve this and check if desired battery charge level has reached then post an immediate notification if it's the case.
As a working case you can use background fetch mode to wake app at specific time intervals and do the required battery level check. Be aware that background fetch doesn't provide a consistent time period, you can't wake up app each 15 minutes or 30 minutes, the time is calculated by the system and it's variable, this can make app to "miss" the target level.
You can use also, silent remote notifications which wake your app when delivered, you do the check and present the local notification if needed. This is more reliable than the first case but of course you need to setup a push notification server or use a service which implements this.
Honestly being you won't find a 100% reliable way to do this, so if this is a primary feature of your app think twice before implementing it.
You can check battery Level in back ground. When it will reach specific level as per your requirement immediately fire Local Notification.
I'm doing an app that requires to reschedule local notification on daily basis. I'm aware about the repeatInterval property, but repetitioon here is like each 2 days etc.
I've seen silent notifications, but they can be used only with push notifications and due to some requirements I can't use that approach.
Now the app works on the hypothesis that the user will open the app quite enough to reschedule those notifications. This hypothesis is fine and we all agree that will work, but I will be more confident, if it would be possible to reschedule them on daily basis without opening the app.
I've seen the new API Background Fetch, this could be really good for me, but from doc and WWDC videos I didn't understand if it is possible to use for "everything" or just to fetch remote data.
As I understand you can do everything that does not take too long, plus you don't get a guaranteed interval when you app will be woken up - you just can request a certain minimum wake interval, which will be treated as a suggestion by iOS.
The only catch is that apparently you have to create an NSURLSession and actually do a web request, upon which return you can do whatever you want. So, you can do a dummy request and forget about any data you get returned, or maybe even create a failing request, as you are not interested in any real request at all - although I'm not sure what Apple will do when you implement the latter ...
You can use repeatInterval property of localNotification
localNotification.repeatInterval=NSWeekCalendarUnit;
For daily basis you can use NSDayCalendarUnit
No there are not API which can wake app after some time interval.
In back ground fetch mode application will wake up after you set minimum time. Application will wake up any time after minimum time interval might be after 5 min or 1 sec. and that will decide system on application usage. so we can not take this approach, if you willing to retrieve remote data compulsory after some time interval.this may help u.
http://www.doubleencore.com/2013/09/ios-7-background-fetch/