We are building phonegap apps and we would like to send notifications to our users.
What is the cost for sending notifications ? Do we need only developer license or something else ?
Also, do we have to publish the apps in the app store in order to use APNS ? (We are building private business apps)
Thanks in advance,
What is the cost for sending notifications ?
Zero, if you doenst use a third party service like Urban Airship
Do we need only developer license or something else ?
Yes, without a license you cannot send any push notifications
Also, do we have to publish the apps in the app store in order to use
APNS ?
No
I'd like to add to the answer provided above. Not all third party services charge you for sending out push notification. PushWoosh is a free service without limits on the number of notifications being sent and the cost remains zero, unless you need some additional features (which you probably don't).
Related
I have two IOS applications and I want to send new message push notification on both applications through pubnub ? Is it possible ? As apple has different APNS certificate for different application and pubnub can use only one certificate at a time, is there any hack possible through which I can send push notification on multiple application ?
This is becoming a more common use case especially with the popularity of car/taxi dispatch applications where you have a driver app that communicates with a separate rider app. There are other use cases but this is the most common one.
Currently, the PubNub Account Dashboard only supports one push cert per key set which means you have a couple of workarounds until we do support multiple push certs per key set.
Two Apps
Use 1 set of keys as the primary keys where you do all pub/sub operations, presences, etc.
You would also include the mobile push payload (apns/gcm) in every publish you send.
One application will register for push notifications using this set of keys.
You will also publish the push payload only on the second set of keys that the other app will register for push notifications on.
That other app will also pub/sub, etc. on the first set of keys.
And each set of keys will have a separate push cert as you already understand.
One App
The alternative is to just have one app (so one push cert with one set of PubNub keys) and you provide a means for the end user to register as a user of one module or the other (modules == apps now). Then just only show the functionality/UI that applies to that type of user. I understand this provides for a larger app footprint and more restrictive release cycles with both modules (apps) in a single app.
Neither of the above solutions are optimal but it is what many customers are implementing for now. We do have the multi-push cert feature on the roadmap but it requires some other features to be in place before we roll this out. Please follow #pubnub Twitter account and the PubNub blog for announcements of this feature and other great improvements that are coming soon.
Questions (from the comments)
Lets say I have two apps, one is driver and another is rider, do I have to create two apps on pubnub and get two set of keys?
As far as I understood from your explanation, after creating two apps on pubnub, we will have to use one keys for chat and another for push notification, am I correct?
In case of using another keys only for push notification, how will it identify to which rider app or driver app it has to send push notification?
Answers
I am answering all three questions in one shot here. I hope this makes it clear.
Apps in the PubNub Account Dashboard are basically just organizational folders so they don't really have to have a direct relationship to an actual application, so it really doesn't matter if you create 1 or 2 Apps in this scenario. But I would create 1 App and two sets of keys: Primary keys and Secondary keys. Both of your iOS apps (Driver and Rider) will use the Primary keys for all pub/sub of messages.
But for push notifications, Driver app will register for push notifications only on the Primary key's push cert and the Rider app will only register for push notifications on the Secondary key's push cert. Whenever you publish a message to the Primary key, you include the push notification payload for APNS (pn_apns : { aps : { alert :...) and you also publish just the push notification payload on the Secondary key.
Curious, is it a way to notify other client that I made a database operation, but without set up own server? Just from the client?
Image below shows, I need a server with SSL certificate. Any way to avoid?
You need to have a server (at minimum for security), but it doesn't need to be your server, there are many 3rd party companies who offer push notifications as part of their platform (like urban airship, or parse).
I am working on an enterprise application to be distributed in-hously. As a feasibility study, I have read & have developed push notifications using APNS. Here is something I want to ask regaring APNS.
My humble request to.enthusiastic developers,
"Answer this if they have encountered or have any idea or have done some sort of work like this. Please do not just point to any arbitrary tutorial or question links of Stack Overflow."
What are the security aspects involded (from information security point of view) on the PayLoad that I will be sending to APNS server. My client cares because of the information Security policies that I too have to abide.
Is it possible to send / receive notification from the APNS from being within a VPN. How ?
Is it possible to completely bypass the APNS server & have a one in-house server, that can send notification to my device directly. How ?
What if, if I want to implement APNS but do not want to share my
payload with APNS server.?
Thank you for reading my question.
Although end points of the APNS architecture are TLS encrypted, Apple may see your data in clear text. You have to clarify with your customer, if this is ok or not.
Yes, but you'll need some open ports
No, this is not possible
You may use some kind of token as the payload and request the confidential information from your own server using this token.
I want to add free subscriptions to a newsstand app i've been working on, the only problem I can find out how to do this is from this guide. However as helpful as that is you have to use urban airship, where it cost $0.10 per subscribe, so for a free app, it'd be costing me, which i couldn't afford to do every month.
Are there any other ways;
How would i set up a server my self?
Would it be the same for any IAP stuff?
Thank you in advance.
Apple requires that Newsstand apps offer its contens using iTunes managed subscriptions. This means you have to run a server that hosts the Newsstand content, which won't be free.
Your only alternative is to release your app as a non-Newsstand app, build the content into your app, and release an App Store update when it's time for a new issue. This isn't ideal as only Newsstand apps have background downloading.
So... get some funding, or find someone else with a Newsstand app who will host your content for free :)
I'm in the same boat. Right now I'm considering using the JavaPNS API to send push notifications. (Local notifications wont work since they don't wake up the app when its not active).
As far as hosting goes... for some unknown reason Google AppEngine does not support JavaPNS.
I'm thinking about writing a JavaPNS program and running it on my own laptop daily to send out push notifications.
The only thing I have yet to figure out is how to get a list of users who have subscribed to my app. If the user must register the device token with my server then that means my server will have to be running all the time, which I cant do. Man I hope I don't have to use urban airship.
There should be a free way to do this. Hopefully we can figure this out...
Is it possible to find information about Apple Push Notification Service usage?
How many people are using, and how many people are declining them?
Or maybe, somebody already has this sort of information?
Apple does not provide a lot of information about how many users actually accept/decline push notifications but you can get a good idea of what's going on by comparing the number of total installs and the number of valid push notification tokens you have ( I'm assuming that since you are interested in analytics you already have a Push server set up ) Push notification tokens are only generated if a user accepts.
If you need more information about the actual push notifications, you'll need to get your hands dirty and actually add tracking code in the application. If you're looking for something free try Google Analytics for iOS with Custom Event Tracking: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/ios/v2/events
Urban Airship also provides a pretty good analytics service, but you have to be using their push notification server: http://urbanairship.com/products/push-messaging#analyze