I am not sure how to best implement keeping our server informed that our iPhone application is currently running (even when in the background). There are a few different options but there is some concern as to what is allowed by the Apple approval process as well as what is the most reliable. The application does have the ability to play music in the background, if that factors into what is approved by Apple.
The first option, is to continually send some sort of heartbeat to the server at a set interval through a simple GET/POST; however, the concern is whether or not this is allowed as a background task. In a very roundabout way it can be argued that it is necessary for the playback but I'm not so sure whether or not that is acceptable. If the server does not hear from them in a set amount of time it will assume the app is no longer running.
The second option involves using a presence channel socket connection and have the server just handle when users enter and leave that channel. With this option the main concern is how reliable is a socket connection like this while an app is in the background. Similarly, whether or not this is allowed by Apple. In this case when the app dies, connection closes and server knows app is not running.
Third option can be used in tandem with either of the other options but to use some sort of APNS push to query the phone as to whether or not it has died and have it respond with some data to let us know; however, this seems somewhat counterintuitive as the push itself wakes the app up.
Any other suggestions or input are also welcome.
Not sure if this should be a comment or answer, but let me put my 2 cents here.
Firstly, Can you please elaborate your needs further, because in case you are playing an Audio in background with AVPlayer/AVPlayerItem you would hand over your content URL to iOS and it will make the calls as and when necessary to keep the playback running, you dont need to know about apps' state.
Let me assume, for whatever reasons you want to achieve what the question asks:
There are 3 states your app can be in when it is "Not Running"
i. Suspended State: your app is not killed but its not receiving any CPU time to execute your code.
ii. Killed by OS: Your app can be terminated by iOS to free up the memory or any other resources.
iii. Force Killed by User: If user swipes up your app from app switcher it gets force killed.
Now when your app is Not Running, you CAN NOT query it, but you can move it to Running State. You can achieve this transition by using following methods (Not exhaustive list, but mentions common ways)
i. Background Fetch : You can configure your app to be invoked periodically, so that it can synchronise with the server and updates its state.
ii. Push Notifications (APNS) : You can ping the app from server so that iOS invokes it for some short period of time (few seconds) to update its state.
iii. VOIP Pushes: If your App is VOIP app you can use PushKit to send Silent Pushes which will launch even the Force-Killed Apps, the above two methods does not transition the app to Running state if it was force killed by user
The above point can be helpful in devising overall strategy but does not answer the question, "How to keep syncing the RUNNING state"
i. When your app is Running(Forground/Background), you can do almost anything that is publicly documented, you can keep calling a URL every minute or every 5 seconds, you need to worry about UX on the device rather than approval process, (People will delete app if they see your app in top battery drainers in the settings section)
ii. For making an HTTP call while your app is in background, you can look at Background URL Session, which off loads the HTTP calls to another process so that the call completes even if app gets killed.
iii. For the socket based approach please refer this technical note. The main issue is that you do not/can not know when your app moves from Running to Not Running State.
iv. As you mentioned that your app uses background audio, it will be always be in Running state if the user plays an audio and puts app in background, in such case you can use Periodic Observer to do some Heartbeat call periodically when the content is being played out.
Related
I have a VPN-Client app that asks the user to pause the connection for 5, 30, and 120 Minutes. The user probably leaves the application to do some work outside of my app in this period, therefore I need to Reconnect the app even if is in the background.
I tested these ways:
UIApplication.shared.beginBackgroundTask: It only leaves the app unsuspended for 30 seconds.
DispatchQueue.global(qos: .background).asyncAfter: It waits to app enter the foreground to toggle.
Thread.sleep in Background Thread: This waits to launch as DispatchQueue
Local Notification: Unfortunately it does not support silent mode as APNS.
My problem with possible ways:
Using APNS and Scheduled Push Notification` to send a silent message: This way probably works, but I prefer to handle it without a server.
Using Background Fetch from Capabilities in Background Modes: I searched a lot about this, and I think it was used for background app refresh and cycling tasks that should be run every day, hour, etc. Therefore, my case can't be used, or it's not efficient at all.
Using Background processing from Capabilities in Background Modes: I searched a lot about this too, I didn't quite catch that it can be used once, or this should be used in a cyclic way as Background Fetch. and my task to reconnect is not that heavy and long to use this strict feature that many times apple mentioned using alternative ways if possible.
Apple only allows a very limited set of app types to run in the background:
Music streaming apps, turn-by-turn navigation apps, VoIP apps, and maybe one or 2 more. (I haven't looked at this in detail for a couple of years so my info is a little stale.)
They do support various tasks like background downloading that the system performs on your app's behalf, but you want your app to re-launch after the designated period and start running again. (Even if the user just locks their phone while your app is paused, the app won't get any CPU time and may be terminated without warning.)
In short, I suspect you are out of luck.
It seems like a VPN app is another class of app that should get "always running in the background" status.
If you are a licensed Apple developer I suggest using one of your pre-paid support tickets to ask about OS support for what you are trying to do, but I have a feeling the answer is going to be "no dice."
I have been investigating iOS background fetch for our enterprise applications. According to articles like this, there are limitations like having 30 seconds to download before the app is terminated and the may be (unconfirmed) a penalty where after 3 timeouts, an app gets banned from background sync. Also if the user kills the app, fetches stop happening -noted here.
The goal is to be able to retrieve data from our servers periodically when app is suspended/not running but sometimes the transfers can take minutes due to long running SQL. I don't want to implement sending periodic notifications to all users.
Before I go down the path of developing for the iOS background sync, I needed to do some due diligence and research alternatives to iOS's background sync and didn't find anything.
Has anyone seen or developed an alternative to iOS's background sync or dealt with this issue for their enterprise apps?
As an enterprise app there's nothing extra you can do except that you can use whatever background modes you want (audio, location, voip etc,) without needing to have a legitimate reason to do so.
Where this might assist is:
you could make use of a significant location change (as opposed to a regular location change) notification to run your app in the background. The problem with this is it of course depends on the user of your app to move around. However, assuming everybody in your workforce commutes to/from work with their iPhone then you would have two opportunities each day for the app to run in the background. A app run due to a location change can be made to execute in the background for more than 30 seconds.
voip pushes: Unlike a regular push notification, a voip push will launch the app even if the user has force terminated it. To make use of this functionality is only a tiny bit more effort than using regular push, you don't have to do anything regarding making or receiving an actual voip call, you just need the voip capability and voip certificates instead of normal push certificates.
The comment in that link is not correct regarding force quitting and background fetch - a user force quitting an app does not make it ineligible to run for a background fetch, I have force quit my own app that uses background fetch but it will still be started by the OS, however what will happen is that the frequency when the app is run will decrease lots, and if the user never runs the app again then the OS will stop launching it.
A user force quitting an app will prevent other things from happening, such as it running in the background in response to a silent push notification for example (unless its a voip push).
Also the 30 seconds in not related to download times, NSURLConnection would stop after 30 seconds, NSURLSession is designed to continue to download on your app's behalf. But if you are downloading and then applying lengthy SQL processing it would be an issue. But minutes of processing time seems excessive, are you sure its all optimized?
The goal is to be able to retrieve data from our servers periodically when app is suspended/not running
The only reliable way to achieve such a behaviour is implementing a User-facing Remote (Push) Notifications framework on backend & apps.
You can append 4kB (or 5 for VOIP) worth of data in the push JSON payload, eliminating need for a network fetch request if implemented in a handshake mechanism.
You can evaluate usage on Silent Remote Notifications to augment content updation & fetch small amounts of content opportunistically, though it has the same as Background App Refresh.
You can definitely improve the API that can take minutes due to long running SQL
And remember you need to have the app updated only when the user actually fires it up. Evaluate implementing a catchy & smooth fetching content screen that transitions into the actual screens once all data is fetched.
We are building an iOS iPhone app that needs to check-in with a server on a 12 hour basis. This is needed to let the server know that the app is still using it's service on the server. To our understanding this is possible when the app is in background state (not showing on the foreground) via backgound fetch or remote notifications.
But this is not possbile when the app is not running or terminated, when the app is in these states then there is no way to initiate communication with a server. Is this statement corret? Is it possible initiate the communication after a device bootup, is it then possible to send a small keep alive message to te sever?
The background fetch and responding to remote notifcations is not possible in the not running and termenating states(?), so we cannot use these mecahnisms for this purpose. If that is the case are there any other solutions that we can try? Or is it just not possible?
We looked at many sources on the internet but some say that it is possible and others say it is not.
You might want to take a look at the Silent Push Notifications. Here is the thing, if the app is in background mode or suspended state, you will be fine. If the app was killed by the user, you have a problem.
You can always send a silent push notification, and wait for a service call made from the device to your service. If there is a response, it means the app was in background or suspended, and then you can go ahead and do whatever you need to do. If no request is made, it means that app was killed. Then you might want a sent a non silent push letting the user of that device know that he needs to launch the app or something like that. I don't know how you are going to work around it, but that could be a possibility.
I would tell you to take a look at NSURLSession and Background NSURLSessionConfiguration as well, but you will run into the same issue. If the user manually terminates the app, you need to find a work around to set up that connection to the server, and that will imply the user to somehow launch your application.
I have a volume control app in the iOS store, but one problem that my users have frequently is that the device kicks it for memory control. Is there any way to either force it to stay active (by permission) or to at least alert the user when its no longer active or in danger?
All the answers are under Background Execution in the iOS Developer Library.
Of course, here's the philosophy:
Always try to avoid doing any background work unless doing so improves
the overall user experience.
See Table 3-1 for the types of background execution. There's a category for audio but it requires audio to be played from the app. It does not sound like your app fits in here. So you'll want to look at notifying the user.
You could send a notification to the user when the app falls to background with applicationDidEnterBackground(), or just before it quits with applicationWillTerminate(), supposedly time-permitting.
Running in the background is permitted. I have an app that does it and while the rules have changed and adapting to it has been gut wrenching at times, it is pretty straightforward. In your case, I would think that you could setup to be notified and then just disappear, no? waking from a notification is part of the state changing protocol and you should be able to do that.
As a point of comparison, in Android, background operations like yours would be implemented as services and would have no fear of being terminated. The strangest thing about the way ios chooses to allow background activity is that you are applying for status one time. In Android, I was able to indicate that a single activity should be kept alive when the app is backgrounded, all others could be terminated. There is no way to do that in ios.
I take it my disappear and wait for notifications is probably not going to work for you because there is no way to be notified of volume changes. You must be polling? In which case, you probably are going to have to ask to be kept alive. Would be nice if you could just piggyback on other services, e.g. keep me alive while music is playing.
To answer your other question, yes you will get notified if/when you really are going to get termed, so you could send a notification at that point.
I'm spec-ing an iOS app (which will be built outside of our company) which will upload a user's data entry to a server. If the device is not connected to the Internet, we'd like to save data on the device and upload it when the network is re-connected. (The app will primarily run on iPod Touch devices that will be disconnected most of the time).
If the user unlocks the device and re-opens our app after the network is reconnected, then uploading to the server should be easy because the app is running.
But what if the app is not running, where "not running" can mean one or more of:
device was power cycled
user has locked the device and it's sitting in his pocket
app crashed
user exited the app
user started using other apps so our app isn't running in the foreground anymore
are there other cases?
In the cases above, is there a way (ideally a battery-efficient way) to ensure that local data is uploaded soon after Internet connectivity is restored? Is the answer different depending on which of the cases above caused the app not to be running?
And is there a minimum iOS version the device will need in order to enable some (or all) of the above not-running cases to still upload when the app is not running?
My apologies if these are obvious newbie questions-- I'm not an iOS expert.
There is an interesting technique that is used by among others Instapaper and News.me(the pioneers of this technique) where you use region monitoring to initiate background downloads or uploads. Marco (Instapaper) blogged and talked (in episode 80 of the Build and Analyze podcast) about his communication with Apple so it should be a allowed in the App Store.
In brief the technique is that you set up certain regions (geofences) like "home" or "work" and respond to the locationManager:didEnterRegion: (and similar) callback(s). Your app will wake up from the background once you enter the pre-specified region and you can check to see if there is any data to upload.
This technique won't guarantee that the data is uploaded when the network reconnects but it will allow your app to automatically upload the information when the iPod Touch users gets home to their WiFi network.
That should most likely be at least once a day which may or may not be frequent enough for you. You could add a timestamp to when the initial upload was attempted and send that along the upload once it succeeds to get the correct order of events (data entries) on your server.
There is no way to ensure this. If your application is "not running" (by the definition described in your question), it will not be capable of responding to a change in the device's network status. It should be setup to resume upload operations the next time the application runs again.
EDIT:
Some of the cases you've described may indeed provide different opportunities for your application. Specifically, if the user "exits" the app by pressing the home button or launches another app in the foreground, your application may continue to run the in the background and could potentially respond to a change in network reachability.
The nature of what may be done in the background and for how-long is well documented, and supported by any version of iOS that supports multi-tasking. I recommend you review the documentation pertaining to App States and Background Services.
device was power cycled --> really NO WAY of resuming, unless you open the App!!!
user has locked the device and it's sitting in his pocket --> apps applicationStatus is UIApplicationStateInactive but it is running in the background. You still are able to react to notifications and i.e. accelerometer events. Try the Reachability Class and Log the changes!
app crashed --> NO WAY, unless opening the App
user exited the app --> App is sitting in the background. There you have a maximum of 10 Minutes Restriction of fully using your App (like the App "Pastebot" does)
user started using other apps so our app isn't running in the
foreground anymore --> Same as user exited the app
On multitasking Apple says the following:
Real multitasking only for certain kinds of usage, as there is Audio Background playing, VOIP (like Skype), navigation applications
All the other apps can request a specific amount of time after the app is closed/in the background, to finish certain tasks (as sending an email, sms or uploading/downloading important data)
Important Quote from dev docs:
Your app delegate’s applicationDidEnterBackground: method has approximately 5 seconds to finish any tasks and return. In practice, this method should return as quickly as possible. If the method does not return before time runs out, your app is killed and purged from memory. If you still need more time to perform tasks, call the beginBackgroundTaskWithExpirationHandler: method to request background execution time and then start any long-running tasks in a secondary thread. Regardless of whether you start any background tasks, the applicationDidEnterBackground: method must still exit within 5 seconds.
If you're building a restful API then I would recommend using RestKit, it has a request queue that checks the network status on the device and starts uploading once network access has been assured. You can read more about this here: http://mobile.tutsplus.com/tutorials/iphone/advanced-restkit-development_iphone-sdk/. Read the sections about Request Queue and background download/upload. It should be noted that RestKit is a big library which has it's advantages and disadvantages. I'm not completely sure how this que works with the app lifecycle, if it saves the request que even if the app is terminated. You would have to investigate that. RestKit does support background uploading/downloading, but as already noted, I think it's impossible to do any uploading if the app is terminated and not in background state.
I wouldn't recommend using RestKit if the API isn't Rest though.
You can download and experiment with RestKit here: https://github.com/RestKit/RestKit.