I have already done this in Android, but I need to know if or how to do it in iOS. Having a somewhat definitive "no its not possible" will help me convince the powers that be.
The app I have is a VOIP app, although at this point all the incoming call handling is done via simple notifications. I know that if our app were in use (its more unified communications than simply voice so it may be active while not on a call) I could do this easily... its my app.
Its when the app is not in the foreground that I'm running stuck.
All the "how to do VOIP" examples use the voip socket to simply add a notification. While the APN notifications aren't terribly speedy, without the immediate feedback of a ringer, I can't justify putting in all the additional code (since we're not using SIP I'll have to write the socket layer myself in order to get the notifications slightly sooner).
Is it as simple as opening a custom URL which will launch my app and show the ringer ([[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:#"myapp://example.com/ringer/call-12321123"]];)
? That would seem to not allow me to return the user to the app they were using before the ringing started.
Related
I've created an iOS app, that connects to an embedded device using swift-nio-ssh. This app has no UI to control the device, as that is supposed to be done with a Watch app, using WatchConnectivity.
As it stands, I have to keep the iOS app in the foreground or the SSH client will die after a few seconds. Instead I'd like to be able to keep the proxy app running in background, screen locked or whatever else the user wants to do with their iPhone.
I've done research on background modes, but none of the available APIs seem to fit my use case.
Have I overlooked something?
If not, would I be able to abuse another API instead (Audio, VoIP or NetworkExtension from what I've gathered)?
If so, would the app still be able to pass the review process somehow?
Thanks!
You haven't overlooked something and this applies to everything, not just SwiftNIO-using apps. On iOS, if an app goes into the background then it will be stopped and network connections will die at some point.
The only way around that are the mainly VoIP exceptions you mention in (2) which you have to specifically request from Apple.
In WebRTC i m giving offer when the app is open and working fine and when it goes to background or Phone is unlock offer is not going.How offer can be sent.Can any one help me.
You have several ways to implement this
1) declare your application as VOIP. This kind of application is allowed to have one signalling socket working even in background mode; you should use setKeepAliveTimeout:handler: method as well in order to keep your socket connection active. As soon as new data will be ready for reading on this socket your application will be awaken and you can send local notification to let user know about incoming call. But this approach is deprecated and isn't battery friendly.
2) Simple way is you can just make use of voip push notifications.
I am starting an application using Restroom and have a few questions about the iOS SDK.
I read through the documentation here http://documentation.telestax.com/restcomm-ios-sdk/doc/html/Classes/RCDevice.html#//api/name/listen
I have also checked out this:
https://github.com/RestComm/restcomm-ios-sdk
I see that the RCDevice class has a listen method and an unlisten method. If I want the device to always be available to receive calls should I have the listen method always going? If so, is this going to be terrible for battery life?
How do I make sure that the application is always running on the device so that it can always receive calls? I am pretty sure that iOS 10 will stop background connections unless the app is running in the foreground.
Is there a way to wake the application or open the application in the case of an incoming call? Can I use push notifications or something similar to wake/open the app?
I already replied to this question on the Restcomm Forum, but let me also answer here for better visibility by the community:
Yes, once you call unlisten() you will no longer be registered and hence receive no incoming events.
Ok, so it varies per platform. For Android since the SDK is wrapped in an Android Service even when the App leaves the foreground, the SDK continues running and you are able to receive events (we still need to check some updates on Android O though on that respect). For iOS we haven't implemented that yet so once you leave the foreground you are not able to receive any events :(. However, the plan is to move to Push Notifications functionality on both platforms soon.
Please check (2). Also, without Push Notifications, we were planning of supporting this with https://github.com/RestComm/restcomm-ios-sdk/issues/153, but also this isn't ready yet.
Best regards,
Antonis Tsakiridis
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 a requirement to develop an app that is capable of receiving pushed information from a server - which as its not possible to intercept SMSs or apple push notifications would probably have to be implemented as a poll and see what's there or similar type of thing.
However of course such a thing isn't possible if the app isn't executing in the background.
The app couldn't be considered to be musical or voip related, however its possible that it could be considered to be gps related as the pushed information would be displayed to the user based on certain triggers, and one of those triggers could be location.
Would this app with a UIBackgroundMode of gps submitted to the app store stand a good chance of being accepted?
i have been trying to do the same thing and here is what i found
iPhone - Backgrounding to poll for events
(top answer: update 2)
shows a method that should be ok, meaning your app wont be rejected for using it. the guy who posted it said it should be ok and i have asked other members who said the same (i have not verified this myself).
here is my implementation of that post
local notifications?
You don't have to use a hack for your requirements.
iOS provides a facility whereas your application is suspended but your socket is still monitored. If there's any incoming traffic on the socket, the app is woken up and handed back the control of the socket.
Advanced App Tricks
Look under the heading, "Tips for Developing a VoIP App"