I have a iOS 5.1 application that registers to the APNS service to receive notifications. The register is successful and I receive the notifications correctly. The problem comes when I try to handle the notifications.
Once the application is running, the method didReceiveRemoteNotification in the AppDelegate is called correctly and so the notification is handled as intended. This, however, only happens when the application is running on the foreground.
However, when the application is running on the background or is simply stopped, that method is not called. I've read that you should add some lines to the method didFinishLaunchingWithOptions method to obtain the notification from the userInfo dictionary, and handle it. This works just fine, but ONLY when the application is opened by clicking on the notification at the Notification Center. This means that if you open the application by clicking on its badge, or simply by changing context if you were running it on the background, the app never realises that a notification came in. Additionally, if more than one notification was received, we can only handle one of them at once by clicking on the Notification Center, which is a pain :-)
Is there any way to read the pending notifications in the Notification Center? I know there is a way to flush them using the method cancelAllLocalNotifications but I haven't found a way to just read them. And I really need to handle all of them. I thought of implementing a communication protocol with the third-party notification server to retrieve the information again when the application comes to the foreground, but since the information is already in the operating system I would find it strange if it's impossible to access it somehow.
So, does anybody know a way to do it? Thanks in advance.
When a push notification arrives and the user clicks 'cancel', your app has no way to read that push notification again. You have to implement a separate functionality (most probably on server-side) to fetch a list of notifications sent to this device.
For example, if a chat functionality is provided in your app and you send chat messages via push notifications then you should also keep chat messages on the server. If a user clicks 'Cancel' on any push notification then that chat message will not be displayed on the iOS device. In that case when a app comes in foreground later, you make a call to the server and fetch all the past chat messages (sent via push notification).
Ok, So a possible solution would be to have another database table with the messages in with a 'read' flag and a messageID field? Which by default the read flag is NO, then when the app successfully reads this and displays, it updates the flag to YES?
And with only 256 bytes to play with, what sort of ID field length would be necessary?
Edit,
Executed this plan and its working successfully.
Related
I am creating a framework that can receive custom (a certain data model) messages from firebase. The framework is going to be implemented to receive notifications that are not related with the app but with other stuff.
So the framework is going to handle all the display issue by translating the data received and create a notification as it is indicated (I have some flags in data receive that indicated if I should use an image or attach an icon .. etc).
So I did some research on how to receive messages from FCM.
In first instance, I found direct channel that allows to bypass APNS, the problem is that, this only works with the app in foreground.
I indeed create a test project in firebase, a single view app, register my app in firebase project, set info.plist, configure , and send a notification to my app and It worked (just when the app was open).
Then I looked for another choice, and I found APNS. Skiping all the process for validation between firebase and APNS. I found that when you have all set up (and you put all initialization in didAplicationFinishLaunching) your app is able to receive notifications from firebase (Through APNS) when applicaton is in background.
But, notification received (the one that gets displayed) is just for you to tap over it and then it will fire up the app again an only then you will receive the whole data in aplication:didReceiveRemoteMessage method.
My question is, is there a way I can get this custom messages even in background and when received I can display a notification with the content of the whole message?
Yes,
Fortunately you can do that but for that you need to send Silent Notification which will let you process the notification in background and schedule local notification to trigger it with you desired data.
I have implemented AWS SNS push notification service.
We have an issue which is explained below :
Scenario :
We are trying to save the notification message we receive as a part of requirement.
When the app is killed (swipe out from recent apps) we are able to receive notification, also we are able to save the notification message when we open the message directly from the notification panel it works fine,but when we open the app directly the notification message is not getting saved.
In short we are not able to know if we had received a notification message if we directly open the app rather than clicking the message from the notification panel.
Is this default behavior ? or is there any work around for this ?
Have looked into many posts on about Push Notifications but haven't seen any threads pointing to this scenario.
This is a normal behavior, and there is no workaround.
If your app is killed by the user, it won't be able to run ANY code before it's manually launched again.
If it's manually launched from a notification, this notification's payload will be handled by your AppDelegate.
On top of that, don't forget that Push notifications are Best Effort. That means that they are not reliable, they can be heavily delayed or never delivered at all. Don't rely on Push notifications to achieve any critical work.
If you need to keep a copy of your notifications in-app, keep them server side and fetch them as you would do with any other object.
In order to execute code when the app is killed by the user you need to implement VOIP using PushKit framework provided by apple.
VOIP push unlike regular push notification enables the app to become active even if the app is killed by user.
a simple question: is it possible to get a message, notification or similar when the internet connection is available when app is killed or not running?
For my purpose, I need a way to synchronize all my notifications because APNs can send only the last message.
EDIT:
I'm wondering how some apps (e.g. whatsapp) are able to sync their notifications when the internet connection is up. If I kill whatsapp, I can receive multiple notification when internet connection is reachable, but the APNS server provides only last message and, for this case, I'm not able to send silent notification. If I should develop a chat application, what are the best practices to work with Apple notifications?
If you send a push notification with a title, text, sound and/or badge property while the app is suspended (was killed / force closed), the device will still receive it, e.g. will show the text as a notification, play a sound and/or change the badge count.
However, your app won't be launched or woken up in the background in this case, so you have no way to handle the notification before the user taps on it. (See this question:
Will iOS launch my app into the background if it was force-quit by the user?)
So if the app was force closed by the user, your only option is to send a notification to be displayed as it is and if the device is offline, only the last notification will be received and displayed by the device.
For more control, you could use silent push notifications to implement "push-to-sync". In this case, the push notification only signals that there is new data to be fetched. The app (if not force closed) loads the data from the server then and triggers local notifications with the right data in the right order. But this won't work, if the app was force closed.
Apple push notifications have a lot of restrictions, so you won't be able to implement a perfect solution. In my opinion, it's fine if the user gets only the last notification when the device gets online after being offline for a while. At least he is informed that there is a new message and after opening the app, he can see the other new messages too. For the "push-to-sync" scenario, I would say that the user has no right to expect that the app works as desired, if he force-quits it.
Push notifications were never intended to be used in the way they are used by a lot of apps by now. E.g. they shouldn't contain sensitive data such as a chat message. They were intended to inform the user that there is new data for the app, so he can launch it to see the new data. E.g. instead of sending the actual chat message text a push notification should just contain the text "You have a new message". Then, you don't have the problem you described. Of course this is a terrible solution in terms of usability.
On Android, when supplying the same id in two calls to NotificationManager.notify, only one notification will be shown in the notification drawer.
But how to do it on iOS
Thanks
Notifications on iOS are not designed to be grouped/collapsed or replaced by other notifications. Just check other messenger apps, the convention is to have a separate notification for each message, contrary to Android. Also a message doesn't get replaced by a new message in the same conversation. The functionality that Android provides here simply doesn't exist in iOS.
What you could do instead is, to send silent notifications ("push-to-sync") and handle the grouping/replacing on client side, since you have more control over local notifications (e.g. you can remove single local notifications, but not single remote notifications). But keep in mind, if the app was force quit, it won't be woken up to process the silent notification.
I think your best option is to stick to the convention and don't group/replace notifications.
about iOS you have to understand many things about the push notification
first it is not part of your app, in iOS it is separate application called notification centre that your app add itself to it so when APNS send a notification it send it to the notification centre in your iPhone not to your app.
so what you need to do will be in the server side not in the mobile side
for example let's say it is a chat application
the server side should check if the message is sent from the same user
the badge count should remain the same and not to notify APNS with new count
and also in the server side
the server will check if the message from the same user to send only sound notification not text or if the server got many message at once from the same user send the text with got many message from same user
but all of that is just work around as something like this is not provided yet in iOS may be in iOS9 as it become more open and not like previous versions
good luck
I have a VoIP app, where the incoming call notification is very important.
The problem is, sometimes I don't get the push notification (even Apple said it's not guaranteed). But, I do have a mechanism to notice that an call is coming while the app is in the background.
So, what I want to do is.. still use Push Notification as the main handler for incoming call (because it handles the situation when app is closed). However, if the push notification failed to deliver and my app gets the call invite, I will raise a local notification, telling user that you have an incoming call.
My question is... how can I check if a notification is showing before I decide whether to fire a local notification?
AFAIK you can only detect the notification when the user taps on the banner OR if the app is open when the notification comes. So I can't see a way to detect if the notification has come yet or not. Just adding to the pain, push notification is famous for its unreliability.
There’s no API to get any information about the state of your notifications. Since you’re making a VoIP app, you have the option to have it get woken up for incoming data, which would let you post your “incoming call” notification whenever you need it—see the “Configuring Sockets for VoIP Usage” section here.