I'm fairly new to app development and am having trouble figuring this out. One part of my app involves a messaging platform. Right now I am using a php web server to connect to MySQL backend. I have all the functionality of a messaging app, but I am unsure how to push new messages when they are available.
One basic solution would be to call my function to check for new messages every x amount of seconds, but obviously that's not a good solution. I have looked into Apple Push Notification Service and am unsure if this would fit my needs. When I looked into it this seems to be for sending notifications to the user remotely. However, rather than the user getting these messages displayed I would like the app to call a function instead (the function would load the new messages). Is this possible with push notifications?
Also this app is on both iOS and Android, so if there is a (possibly third party) solution that would cover both it would be ideal.
Any insight into this problem is greatly appreciated!
When you send a push notification and the app is in the foreground, the AppDelegate has a method called which allows you to execute whatever method you want.
This is only for iOS though, I don't know know it's handled in Android.
Related
I hope that someone could help me to find the better solution that fit my problem.
The scenario is the following: My app should periodically connect in background to some third-party end point and fetch some data. If there is something interesting the app should present a notification, so the user can open the app and see what is interesting.
I've already done in Android with Worker API. On boot, or when the app is launched for the first time, I create a periodically work (each 30min) that connect to the end-point, download data and show a notification, if any.
On iOS what should I do? First of all, there is no bootup/startup listener. Background fetch as I understand don't suit my problem, because reboot or app kill. So I'm not able to find the right solution of my problem, the last chance is to use push notifications:
In this case I should have a server (maybe a PHP hosting with Cron Jobs) that periodically send a push notification to all my clients (maybe with firebase or iOS SDK, what's the better solution?), when the app receive that "push", should connect to the end-point, download some data, and present a user notification only if any.
Is this possible? Is there some examples? I'm sorry if the question was already asked but answers are very old and I need to know if nowadays there is a better solution to my problem.
EDIT
Thanks to anyone who participated in the comments but #Paulw11 has right. No way to be guaranteed that the app will do the background work. So, the only solution is to do everything in my backend.
Users must Sign In to the app, register on my remote database which endpoint they would follow and use Cron Job (or something like that) to send simple push notifications. I'm very disappointed.. Anyway I'm still open to other suggestions, if someone would answer to my question
I have a service that allows user to enter the type of events they like, and whenever a new event that fits those criteria is available in my database, I want them to get a notification.
I have been looking around at the best way to handle it and I have found two possible solutions, but I'm not very clear with which one I should use and how.
First, a solution that looked great was the didReceiveRemoteNotification method and the usage of remote silent notifications to tell the app that new content was available. But my questions remains: how can I send this remote notification to the user if I don't know which criteria he has. I mean, how can I send this notification using PHP? I'm a bit lost here.
So I found another possible solution that does look a lot like a hack (iPhone - Backgrounding to poll for events), to be able to make your app execute a method every XX minutes while it is in background. This would be way more battery consuming and I'm not even sure it would be accepted by Apple, but at least it is clear as to how it works: the app downloads data from a link with the parameters that fit the special criteria, and if there is new data, it sends a notification.
How could I combine both these methods?
EDIT
I think the main issue on my side is that I don't understand how I could check a certain PHP file whenever new data is added into mysql and make sure that it fits the criteria of the user and then send the notification. That is the part that I don't understand in the backend PHP usage.
Your flow should be like this -
Mobile -> BackendServer(PHP) -> APNS server -> Notifications->Back on device.
User will submit her/his criteria to server then server will process on that and send request to APNS server.
The APNS server will send remote notification on her/his device based on criteria requested.
I have a chat application developed by JS. I want to send PING to server once in a while. Its not a problem if app runs on fore ground. The problem is when user minimizes it or open another app. My app looses its focus and gets into suspended state.
I have following two use-cases.
To keep the chat session open I need to send PING to server (Its an IRC server) every X minutes even the app runs in background.
We also need to check for new messages (by ajax on a local http server) and add a local notification to the notification queue so when user clicks on it app can resume
I have found apple does not allow running apps in the background. if they allow they require special permission. I found some apps does it by requesting finite length execution time.
What is the best way to get highest possible background execution time? As a chat app can I request permission for voip, location or any other way ?
Note: the app will be running in an environment where there is no Internet. Hence push notification will not work here.
Update: After doing a lot searching I found background fetch. It seem background fetch will suite it. But still the problem remains, its not called in a timely manner.
This sounds like an interesting problem. From reading the various comments, it sounds like you want this to work when you're on a local network - so you have wifi, but the wifi router/base station isn't connected to the actual internet?
Because background refresh isn't going to be predictable - you'll never know when it is going to update - you might want to get creative.
You could look into exploiting iOS VOIP support, only without the Voice! Apple has some tips on VOIP here. VOIP basically uses something called SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), which is signalling layer of the call, and a lot like HTTP. It's this SIP layer that you want to take advantage of.
This isn't going to be terribly easy, but it should be achievable. Setup your app to use VOIP, and then look into something like PJSip as your SIP library. Then, on your local network have a SIP Server (I'm sure there are plenty open source implementations) that you can register your iPhone against (so your server knows where your phone is, pretending to be a VOIP phone). This should work, because it doesn't need to go through Apple as far as I am aware... And will run happily on your local network.
Then, the server can send a message via SIP to the handset, as if it were instigating a VOIP session. You app is awoken, gets the messages - ideally from the SIP message if possible - and then just doesn't start the session. SIP was designed just for creating sessions, not just VOIP. When I worked in Telecoms R&D (a long time ago) we were using it to swap between Text/Voice/Video, all using local servers.
You'll have to jump a lot of hoops to make this work, but it would be pretty awesome. I have never tried this actual use case - especially with iOS, but I'm fairly sure it will work. It is a bit of a fudge, but should get you where you need to go.
Good luck!
You can use something like PubNub to build this chat app with iOS using native Objective-C code, or with the Phonegap (Cordova) libs.
The beauty with using a real-time messaging network like PubNub is that when the app goes to the background, you can easily have the chat messages come in on APNS.
When the app is in the foreground, it can just receive them as the native (PubNub) message. And if it needs to "catch-up" with the messages it missed while in the background (but received via APNS), its trivial to implement.
Also, PubNub is platform agnostic -- so you can easily also use it on Web, Android, BB, Windows Phone, etc.
http://www.pubnub.com/blog/build-real-time-chat-10-lines-code/
http://www.pubnub.com/blog/html5-websockets-beautiful-real-time-chat-on-mobile-using-pubnubs-channel-presence/
https://github.com/pubnub/objective-c/tree/master/iOS
https://github.com/pubnub/javascript/tree/master/phonegap
geremy
I have an app that needs to update every time a java web application creates more data. Simple enough, right?
But I found out that my app can`t run in background to ask for more data periodically, and I think I need to use the push notification system. That seems to be overly complicated for a really small thing.
And then, reading about it, I found out that the push notification can never arrive! For example, if the app is offline when the push notification is sent but is online a few moments later.
So, in that case, how can I update the data? I only bring data from the server when the user logs in. I didn't want to do that every time the application became active...
I guess there is a simple solution but this is my first app, any help would be appreciated.
You see why you should read your question before posting it?
And then, reading about it, I found out that the push notification can
never arrive! For example, if the app is offline.
So, in that case, how can I update the data?
Guess what, if you are offline, there is not much you can do... Moving on to serious things:
iOS7 allows you to do periodic background fetchs (check the Multitasking Enhancements). Have this tutorial.
I'm trying to look for a way as to how I can notify a user of new updates based off of a .Net API that I created. Much like that notification you get on facebook, I just need to alert the user that something has been updated. So I'm thinking I need a function that runs in the background while my user uses the app combined with a NSTimer.
Based on my research (and on this question https://stackoverflow.com/a/14835300/639713) apparently you can only achieve such a thing for VOIP and location services. And that using push notification is the only way. Is it really the only option that I can use for such a need? Or are there any other ways?
Thank you for your time.
You have two options:
While your app is open, poll the server every so often to see if there are any updates to report.
This will work only as long as the user has your app open, and as you note, your app will only be allowed to stay open for a long time if it happens to be a VOIP or navigation app.
Use push notifications to push updates to the user’s device.
The disadvantage here is that you will need to write some server-side code to talk to Apple’s push notification servers (as described in this tutorial). This may or may not be a big deal in your particular situation, but it’s the only way to get data to the user when your app isn’t open.