My server needs to send an Apple Push Notification with an alert that goes something like, "Your driver will arrive at 2:45pm." It would be nice not to have to pull the user's time zone and time formatting preferences up to the server, and instead just pass some kind of universal point-in-time indicator (e.g. epoch seconds or UTC timestamp) and have the iOS device turn that into a timestamp in the user's preferred format.
Is this possible?
Short answer - generally 'no.' Here is the Apple documentation:
If the target application isn’t running when the notification arrives, the alert message, sound, or badge value is played or shown. If the application is running, iOS delivers it to the application delegate as an NSDictionary object.
Since your application would generally not be running, you don't get a chance to interpret the contents of the APN package. If however, you do expect to only get APNs when running, then you do have a chance to do application specific actions.
Noting - you also have the issue of the user's language. You've currently selected English for "Your driver ..."
The typical approach is to record the user's timezone and language (and other locale information) on your server, usually at the time of registration. Then, when your server generates the APN it customizes it for the user's locale.
No, there's no way to turn that message.
I think you should get the timezone permanently at your server.
Related
I am building a travel app which gives complete information about all transportation systems in my city. There is a requirement to notify the user when there is any change in time table of public transport/delay/any incident. To get that information, app has to hit the server at a specified time, say 9am everyday, and if anything is reported, that has to be notified to the user using local notification.
I am aware that this is not a proper design and there are many limitations with respect to Application states to fire the event. But still can iOS app manage such situation(which should work even when app is in background, suspended, inactive, terminated), as I am not getting any support from backend team?
Unfortunately if your backend team is not giving you any support then you are out of luck. Silent push is the only way to do this as per your requirement (exact time every day even if terminated). You could try the background update method, as apparently iOS learns when you're most likely to use a particular app and will schedule the update accordingly.
I am developing an iOS app which needs to receive regular data from the server at specific period of time (every 5 seconds).
Apple gives developers some choices for background working.
I convinced that Background Fetch is the proper method for my problem.
But when I tested it I got confused.
Background Fetch has many issues with my requirements:
It does not fetch data at period you defined when declared it:
application.setMinimumBackgroundFetchInterval(UIApplicationBackgroundFetchIntervalMinimum)
I tried this and this:
application.setMinimumBackgroundFetchInterval(5). But no guarantee
that your app will fetch data at this interval.
When the screen is off, your app will not make any fetch until the
phone is unlocked again.
I wonder if there is a way that let my app receives real time data (or at least every 5 seconds).
Note: I read about remote notifications and I do not guarantee that I can execute it now, So I am searching for other solutions.
Thanks
There is no solution to this problem until writing this answer.
If I need a real time notification then I must use Push Notification.
There is no way to check for server data every period of time from the app only, I can send a Remote Notification when new data available on server to wake up the app and let it connect to the server.
May be I am asking a stupid question here.
I recently noticed an UIApplication delegate method
- (void)applicationSignificantTimeChange:(UIApplication *)application {
}
I was wondering what will be its actual use? Do we need to handle this. Can anyone explain a scenario that can happen in an iOS application and we need to do some coding here.
My App is really sensitive to system time, that is the reason I am asking this question. After seeing this API , I have a feeling that I am missing something here to handle.
I am just curious to know... :)
Thanks,
Ramesh Chandran A
Per the documentation on iOS, this method is called:
Examples of significant time changes include the arrival of midnight,
an update of the time by a carrier, and the change to daylight savings
time. The delegate can implement this method to adjust any object of
the app that displays time or is sensitive to time changes. Prior to
calling this method, the app also posts a
UIApplicationSignificantTimeChange notification to give interested
objects a chance to respond to the change. If your app is currently
suspended, this message is queued until your app returns to the
foreground, at which point it is delivered. If multiple time changes
occur, only the most recent one is delivered.
Examples of when this should be used include:
If your app has repeating scheduled events, such as a local notification that now is past, and your app should reschedule the next notification (like daily reminders).
If your app displays data in time ago that needs to be correct, even if the user sets a bad time (for example a medical app that shows your current glucose reading or similar). If a glucose monitor showed an old glucose value as the users current glucose value for instance, the user could make the wrong decision and get hurt.
How you respond to this event depends on your application. You could for instance, read UTC from a server to see if the phone's UTC is correct within some margin, and take appropriate action, such as warning the user, or updating an internal offset between actual UTC and phone UTC.
Hope that helps.
-applicationSignificantTimeChange: is roughly equivalent to the UIApplicationSignificantTimeChangeNotification notification.
I have a custom date picker control that highlights the today date. Subscribing to this notification allows it to change its highlight at midnight, or if the user messes with the time setting manually.
is it possible to run a cllocationmanager at a specific time even when the app has been closed (not terminated)?
For example I need to maintain a location between 22:00 and 01:00 and pass it to my server at 15minute intervals. It will be disabled as default to protect privacy as well as battery life.
It's not integral to sucess but could add a new revenue stream.
Any ideas?
Thank you for your time.
On iOS 7 you can (link -> "Multitasking Enhancements").
Apps that regularly update their content by contacting a server can
register
with the system and be launched periodically to retrieve that content in the
background. To register, include the UIBackgroundModes key with the fetch value
in your app’s Info.plist file. Then, when your app is launched, call the
setMinimumBackgroundFetchInterval: method to determine how often it receives
update messages. Finally, you must also implement the
application:performFetchWithCompletionHandler: method in your app delegate.
I am new to IOS and wants to used Local Notification feature of iOS.
my problem is i do not know if i can go with local notification. in my case data will come from web service... it is like..no specific date. default time interval is 60 Sec. after 60 sec app has to call webservice which will return notification data..and after some validation i need to push to user.
and if user click on view details it will launch appand get data via webservice.
Is using localnotification will serve my purpose? or i have to go with other approach?
Please help.
Thanks in advanced.
I think this 60 second thing is you polling the server every 60 seconds to fetch new data, then if there is new data post a local notification?
This is kinda possible with iOS7 but not exactly every 60 seconds, sometimes not at all, But in general it is strongly frowned upon. Instead the webserver should send push notifications when new data is available, It saves the user battery life.
On iOS7 there are silent push notifications (just don't include the alert) that can ask the client to do the validation you mentioned, and If the user needs a notification you can create a Local Notification to alert the user in a change
You should give this documentation a long look, it isn't trivial work for a new iOS programmer:
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/RemoteNotificationsPG/Introduction.html
And here is a relevant Apple documentation quote "Local and push notifications serve different design needs. A local notification is local to an application on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Push notifications—also known as remote notifications—arrive from outside a device. They originate on a remote server—the application’s provider—and are pushed to applications on devices (via the Apple Push Notification service) when there are messages to see or data to download."
If you are trying to achieve this functionality to happen automatically/polling (i.e without user interaction like, clicking on the view details button)- the answer is a big NO at least not till iOS6.x
Your application cannot run for infinite length in background at-not till ios6.x. You may have to consider using APNS service to achieve this.
Otherwise, your approach on scheduling a local notification for ever 60 sec - The user clicks in the view option - the application comes up - You make a web-service call - Get the data - Validate the received data - Uploading to the server, looks fine to happen.
Will it not be annoying to the user getting notification for ever 60 sec & operating on the app to do whatever you intended to do? - Just curious.