How to manage Online / Offline / Away status in background PUBNUB + IOS? - ios

Question

We want to implement Online/Offline using Pubnub framework in iOS but app doesn't work in background more than 10 minutes. We have tried to implement this by enable location feature and its working fine. But client does not want to enable location service for this purpose. So how we will manage to make run enable in background infinite ? (QUE 1)
And if we want to put Online/Offline/Away status in our code
Where we should show,
Online: When user open the app
Offline: When user close the app from background OR delete the app
Away: When user tap on home button and app is in background.
How we will implement this (Specially AWAY & Offline state)?(QUE 2)
Is there any other way to manage Online/Offline/Away ? (Without Pubnub ) (QUE 3)
If Yes, please describe the way.
How we will manage Online/Offline/Away using web service? When we call that web services? (QUE 4)
We are using almost 3-4 year old base code. So should we add any other parameter in plist to enable app in background for more time ? (QUE 5)
Please guide us.

Answer 1

With PubNub Presence, you have the best way to provide this feature in your app but due to the way iOS handles app going into background, you may or may not have opportunity to update this status (depends on how app is configured to run).
But very simply, by enabling Presence for your PubNub keys, when a client subscribes to a channel, a join event is sent to all other subscribers that are listening to presence on that channel.
When the app goes into background, if you have opportunity to do so, you can call unsubscribe on all the channels the client is subscribed to and a leave event will be sent to all the subscribers of that/those channels listening to presence events.
And if the app were to get killed or go to background where you do not have a chance to call unsubscribe, when the app is offline/disconnected for longer than the configured heartbeat period, then a timeout (equivalent to a leave event) will be sent to all subscribers listening to presence events.
The heartbeat defaults to 5 minutes but you can configure this to a lower setting like 60 seconds (or shorter for use cases that require this but never lower than 15 seconds).
If you would like your server to listen to Presence events, then you will want to use our Presence Webhooks (docs coming soon). Please see this StackOverflow thread about how to implement PubNub Presence Webhooks and how to get your PubNub keys configured to use them.

Answer 2

There are two scenarios:
User puts App in the background mode
User quits the App.
What you need to do is to get notified when these events occur:
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self
selector:#selector(appWillResignActive)
name:UIApplicationWillResignActiveNotification
object:nil];
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self
selector:#selector(appWillTerminate)
name:UIApplicationWillTerminateNotification
object:nil];
Now, in that respective methods, set state using PubNub's API
-(void)appWillResignActive
{
// Sample dictionary
NSDictionary *dicState = #{ #"userName" : senderName, // Optional
#"status" : #"Away", // Or whatever
#"isTyping" : #FALSE // Optional
};
[AppDel.client setState: dicState
forUUID: senderId // current user's UUID
onChannel: KPubNubChannelName // channel name
withCompletion: ^(PNClientStateUpdateStatus *status)
{
NSLog(#"%#", status);
}];
}
Once state is updated on PubNub, all the subscribers of that channel will be notified i.e. follwing method will be called:
- (void)client:(PubNub *)client didReceivePresenceEvent:(PNPresenceEventResult *)event
{
if (![event.data.channel isEqualToString:event.data.subscription])
{
// Presence event has been received on channel group stored in event.data.subscription.
}
else
{
// Presence event has been received on channel stored in event.data.channel.
}
if (![event.data.presenceEvent isEqualToString:#"state-change"]) {
NSLog(#"%# \"%#'ed\"\nat: %# on %# (Occupancy: %#)", event.data.presence.uuid,
event.data.presenceEvent, event.data.presence.timetoken, event.data.channel,
event.data.presence.occupancy);
}
else {
NSLog(#"%# changed state at: %# on %# to: %#", event.data.presence.uuid,
event.data.presence.timetoken, event.data.channel, event.data.presence.state);
}
}
When it gets called, you will have to update your datasource accordingly which will reflect the state update.