Why UILocalNotifications does not repeat? - ios

Question

I want to run UILocalNotifications and repeat it every 2 minutes. For this I do:
let reminderNote: UILocalNotification = UILocalNotification()
reminderNote.fireDate = NSDate(timeIntervalSinceNow: 60 * 2)
reminderNote.repeatInterval = NSCalendarUnit.Hour
reminderNote.alertBody = "some text"
reminderNote.alertAction = "View"
UIApplication.sharedApplication().scheduleLocalNotification(reminderNote)
It runs it just one time, later it does not.
I think it's because of this line:
reminderNote.repeatInterval = NSCalendarUnit.Hour
How can I repeat my notifications every 1.5 or 2 hours?

Answer 1

Directly you can not.
Unfortunately repeatInterval can Only be set as TimeUnit Such as Hour, Minute, Second etc.
Eg: Lets say if you want to repeat notification in each 2 minutes, You will need to create 30 notifications that repeats hourly.

Answer 2

firedate sets the time that the notification fires the first time, and repeatInterval is the interval between between repetitions of the notification.
Unfortunately, you can only schedule notifications to repeat at exact intervals defined by NSCalendar constants: e.g., every minute, every hour, every day, every month, but not at multiples of those intervals.
Luckily, to get a notification every 2 minutes, you can just schedule 29 notifications: one right now, one 2 minutes from now, and later one 2 minutes from previous one - up to your 29 notification schedules, and have all repeat every hour. Like so:
So the code in the question schedules a notification to fire every 2 minutes (60 * 2 seconds) from now, and then repeat every hour.
UILocalNotification *reminderNote = [[UILocalNotification alloc]init];
reminderNote.fireDate = [NSDate dateWithTimeIntervalSinceNow:60 * 2];
reminderNote.repeatInterval = NSHourCalendarUnit;
reminderNote.alertBody = #"some text";
reminderNote.alertAction = #"View";
reminderNote.soundName = #"sound.aif";
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] scheduleLocalNotification:reminderNote];
reminderNote.fireDate = [NSDate dateWithTimeIntervalSinceNow:60 * 60];
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] scheduleLocalNotification:reminderNote];
For 2 hours, you set your notification for now, after 2 hours from now and 2 hours from the previous one up to 11 notification (12*2 hours) = 24 - 2 hour (because 1st one will be on the day change) = 22/2 = 11 notifications will be required to set on the repeat interval of day by NSDayCalendarUnit.