I want to build an in-app inbox (a.k.a. message center) as a central place to store messages to my app's users. Think one-way email notifications rather than user-user chat. This is the sort of thing I have in mind (taken from the Victoria Secret app):
Urban Airship have a product which does what I'm after and Intercom.io comes close (although it's focussed more on chat rather than asyncronous email style messages). However, I'm using Firebase elsewhere in my app so I thought it makes sense to use the same SDK for the in-app inbox too rather than introduce another 3rd party.
My question is: does anyone know whether the following logic makes sense (I'm developing on iOS with Swift first)?
Create a tableView as the "inbox"
Use Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) to send a payload to the app including message title, body etc
Add a method to the app to receive the payload and update the tableView's data source
Ideally, I'd like to trigger a notification (+ badge update) if the app's in the background when the message is received and an in-app notification when the app's in the foreground. I'm assuming I can do this with FCM/Notifications.
Has anyone created this sort of thing in the past or have any suggested pitfalls I should be aware of?
Related
I am have an app with push notification implemented in APNs, ie, Firebase has not been used. I need to implement a topic subscription like feature(one present in firebase). Is there a way to implement a topic subscription(One in FCM) or similar option with APNs service? Any heads up is appreciated
I think you will need to manage topic related things on your backend, i-e mobile devices will subscribe to certain topics which are already made at backend, your backend needs to handle all the related things like creating a new topic, assigning respective device token to those topics etc.
I am also looking to work on this
I want to be able to send push notifications in my app. But i would like to be able to send them to certain categories like country
any way to do this if there is 25-30 different categories
also a way for somebody to pick a category and then get push notifications for that category
I handle sending push notifications myself, the backend receives push keys from the mobile apps after login, this way I can decide which user I want to send push notifications... This way you can decide how to implement subscription and push mechanism yourself, and check if a user has a topic enabled and is in the specified country.
Anyway: more info will get you better responses: ios? android? external push notification service? used frameworks?
Have you considered using Firebase Topics?
Based on the publish/subscribe model, FCM topic messaging allows you to send a message to multiple devices that have opted in to a particular topic. You compose topic messages as needed, and FCM handles routing and delivering the message reliably to the right devices.
For example, users of a local tide forecasting app could opt in to a
"tidal currents alerts" topic and receive notifications of optimal
saltwater fishing conditions in specified areas. Users of a sports app
could subscribe to automatic updates in live game scores for their
favorite teams.
You could simply subscribe/unsubscribe users from the relevant country topic.
Was wondering how facebook and instagram gets their notification notices whenever you're using the app. eg. Message number on facebook, Somebody followed you on instagram, etc. Is it using push notifications? Or just regular executions of an api? It seems expensive to do push notifications cuz of the monthly fee of a VPS. (Based off of this tutorial http://www.raywenderlich.com/32960/apple-push-notification-services-in-ios-6-tutorial-part-1)
I wanted to know any other options that I can use as I only need something witht the same effect as facebook or instagram.
Thoughts?
Yes. They do use push notification for updates of friends/follow/IM.
The cost of using Push Notifications is something big company can easily afford and it is nothing compared to how much money a iOS app can make to the dev.
Yes,
This rule clearly states that any advertising or marketing activity by Push Notification could cost your a ban in App Store.
So how about Groupon and other special offer focused apps? Each day I receive notifications from Groupon with clear marketing content, and when I open it I'm redirected into the view with big "Buy" button (Btw. do you know any other live apps using push in similar way? I mean not exact Groupon-clone apps).
Ofcourse user need to have a choice if he wants to receive such notifications or not, and from who (like in Groupon you can choose subscribed cities), privacy policy need to clearly state what kind of notifications user will receive. Maybe the frequency of notifications does matter (1 per day for Groupon)?
Ok lets get back to the point of my question:
Whats the receipe for such app which explicitly bends the 5.6 rule to stays up and running in App Store?
Have you ever trying to submit similar application?
App reviews rules are not strict, since Groupon is just that, an advertisement platform, an app is expected to send these kind of push notification.
But if, for example, the Facebook app would be using push notification to tell there users to download some other app the rulle 5.6 will come in to play.
But just that some other app got approved does in no way mean that you app will, even if it has the same functionality. So the answer you are seeking for will not do you any good, since even if someone got there app approved will not mean you will get it approved.
Is it possible to find information about Apple Push Notification Service usage?
How many people are using, and how many people are declining them?
Or maybe, somebody already has this sort of information?
Apple does not provide a lot of information about how many users actually accept/decline push notifications but you can get a good idea of what's going on by comparing the number of total installs and the number of valid push notification tokens you have ( I'm assuming that since you are interested in analytics you already have a Push server set up ) Push notification tokens are only generated if a user accepts.
If you need more information about the actual push notifications, you'll need to get your hands dirty and actually add tracking code in the application. If you're looking for something free try Google Analytics for iOS with Custom Event Tracking: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/ios/v2/events
Urban Airship also provides a pretty good analytics service, but you have to be using their push notification server: http://urbanairship.com/products/push-messaging#analyze