I need to pass messages between a WP8 app and a Windows Store app. It's sort of a "peer-to-peer" situation in that they will both send and respond to messages from each other, but it's also sort of a "client/server" situation in that the Windows Store app will have 1..N WP8 apps that it is conversing with.
After being beaten about the head and shoulders for my first ideas of trying to use either email or SkyDrive rather sneakily, I'm now considering these possible architectures:
1) Direct Push Notifications
(a) The WP8 app sends Push Notifications to the Windows Store app via a URI it is provided after this conversation takes place:
Windows Store app: "Will you send me updates?"
WP8 app: "Yes."
Windows Store app: "Okay, here's where to send them."
(b) Windows 8 responds to the arriving msgs.
2) Push-Pull using the Cloud
(a) WP8 sends data to the cloud (Azure?)
(b) Windows 8 app periodically polls for it
3) SSL (Using components from someone like /NSoftware (IP*Works))
The messages from WP8 are rather frequent (every 15 minutes, on average), but small/short (short enough to be a Tweet, in fact). The Windows 8 app deals with these msgs "behind the scenes." The user is not aware of them until he runs the associated app.
There weren't any question marks :) but here's my take:
Push notifications would certainly work, but given your "behind the scenes" comment, you may want to look specifically into "raw notifications", which do use the push notification mechanism but aren't associated with UI (like a tile, toast or badge). Pushed toast notifications, for instance, are dropped if the client if off-line.
The frequency of the messages makes me leery of the polling approach given impact on battery life (that said, not sure how a push notification with background task would compare). With the polling approach too you'd need to have some way on your "cloud service" to maintain messages (storage) and then feed back the right messages on each poll, etc. You'd also need to handle the scaling and availability aspects that WNS would do 'free.' Not rocket science, but more work. The push notification is kind of 'fire-and-forget'.
With sockets, you might have more control to the extent the sandboxed model exposes functionality you need. It seems like more moving parts though, and I'd likely go that route only if the other two approaches are otherwise unviable.
Related
Hello I am trying to create a simple push-notification system similar to this common use case:
1. The user gets a chest and can either watch an ad to skip the wait time or wait one hours for the chest to open. The app sends an upstream request which sets up a downstream push notification that shall be delivered in one hour to let the user know the chest is ready.
2a. The user then waits an hour, gets a push notification (outside of the app) to open their chest and they do!
or
2b. They wait 20 minutes then decide to watch the ad. The app sends an upstream request which cancels the pending push notification which would have otherwise been delivered in 40 minutes.
Okay awesome so that is the problem and I am having a hard time understanding how to do this. I have looked over the documentation for each of these programs but they seem designed for downstream push notifications. It just seems odd there is no built-in support for this use case. It seems like such a common use case.
I so far found 3 solutions that will integrate into my cross-platform Unity setup and provide services for free or super-cheap:
Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)
Google Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM)
OneSignal
Amazon seems to group clients into "Topics" so I guess I would be setting up a one-device-topic and essentially. I can subscribe and unsubscribe from them but it doesn't seem to support a topic with a 60 minute delay.
2a. Create a topic: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/sns/latest/dg/sns-tutorial-create-topic.html (it would just include the current device)
2b. Subscribe to it
2c. Send a message to it https://docs.aws.amazon.com/sns/latest/dg/sns-tutorial-publish-message-with-attributes.html
So basically I can add attributes to my message but it would seem I need to implement the server-side code to read a delay attribute then somehow queue a message for delay. Maybe I am missing something?
For Firebase I pretty much see the same thing as Amazon. There are topics https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/android/topic-messaging and a means to send upstream messages https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/android/send-with-console but with the messages I don't see anyway here to get the time delay https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/unity/topic-messaging I see conditions towards the bottom of that article but I don't know if it is meant for this use case.
OneSignal has the easiest to scroll-through API. I'll refer to some strings that you can CTRL-F by using the format ("Create Notif") because everything is on this one page: https://documentation.onesignal.com/reference
So basically I can ("Send to Specific Devices") which I guess would be the sending device, then I can ("Schedule notification for future delivery.") using the send_after parameter. And finally, if need be, I can ("Cancel notification"). So this appears to be everything I need. I'm currently looking at this option and trying to figure out how to actually get this working.
So there is my progress over the last few hours researching each of these options. I am hoping you can help me better understand how I may be misunderstanding the above options as this seems to me a very common use-case. Perhaps I am just not googling the question correctly. Any help appreciated.
Whenever there's a likelihood that you'll need to cancel a significant percent of the notifications you send, you should use local notifications. That way you can easily schedule and cancel them locally without making any network requests. Also, this solution works for offline devices which is great for games (played on planes, etc...)
I am trying to make a chat app using XMPP protocol. The app is working fine except it doesn't show message notification when the app is in background. In Android I have used a Service for this purpose, however in Windows Phone I couldn't find anything similar to this.
I am trying Background Tasks for this, but as far as I have understood, they're made to run on prespecified trigger and I cannot add any custom trigger to it. In Android I have put my socket connection and parsing message calls in the service itself so that they can run on background too and the socket doesn't get closed even when the app is stopped.
So my question is, is there any similar way to do it in Windows Phone 8.1 (WinRT, not silverlight) or if Background Task is the only option, can you suggest a way to implement the notification functionality. I don't need the exact code, I just need a push to the right direction.
First: You cannot run a network connection in background.
Suggested way is using PushNotifications:
Either directly with a Toast Notification
Or with a PushTrigger to handle a Raw Notification, work out what to do
with it (who was it from, prepare data, etc.) and then create a ShellToast from it. Adds flexibility and improves user experience, but is quite complex.
Known downside: You have to use a server.
Only workarounds: Background-Tasks that checks for new messages about every 30 Minutes.
I have an application where I need to create local notifications via polling without doing push - primarily due to client infrastructure limitations and their security model.
I've read: http://www.objc.io/issue-5/multitasking.html, I've seen David Chan's WWDC presentation - where single push messages kick off download tasks - but what I truly need is background fetch - on a regular basis - like every ten minutes - in iOS 7.
I've seen the VOIP hacks. No. What non-hack way is there to do this without user interaction or push messages? Any examples you can point me to?
Here's what I know:
Background data tasks will work in the debugger but if you can get a console on an IPA, you'll quickly find out they really are prohibited (thereby invalidated many examples).
Background URL tasks require custom delegates - but fetch completion handlers are iffy. This too I found with an IPA and console.
I would love to avoid using the AFNetworking lib - for something quite simple.
Background fetch is not a reliable solution - you are at the mercy of the OS, and it is not very merciful. Abusing iOS background modes is not a reliable solution - Apple is known to reject applications that enable background modes, such as location, VOIP and music playback, without a legitimate reason. Background URL tasks are not something you can rely upon to wake your app; they will wake it, but the app will not be awake enough in the background to enqueue a background URL task.
Your best and most intended method is still background fetch, but be prepared to be disappointed. Your app will not be woken app in the interval you need. Also, the user can kill the app in the app switcher screen, causing your app to never wake up until opened.
No real reliable method other than push. You need to insist with your client for the sake of user experience.
Unfortunately there is no "reliable" way to do that on iOS. With the background fetch API you are not guaranteed to have process run when you would like it run. As you've said, you've already looked at the API so i'm probably telling you something that you already know. A local notification wouldn't solve your issue either as this isn't a way that you can wake your application up and kick off network events. This is behavior that Apple doesn't want as this would negate the whole purpose of their background task coalescing.
You really need to have a push mechanism in place for something like this, so if this is something that is needed, then you may have to stress that to the client.
I have created a web-service app and i want to populate my view controllers according to the response i fetch(via GET) in main thread. But i want to create a scheduled timer which will go and control my server, if there becomes any difference(let's say if the count of an array has changed) i will create a local notification. As far as i read from here and some google results, i cant run my app in background more then ten minutes expect from some special situations(Audio, Vo-IP, GPS).. But i need to control the server at least one per minute.. Can anyone offer some idea-or link please?
EDIT
I will not sell the app in store, just for a local area network. Let's say, from the server i will send some text messages to the users and if a new message comes, the count of messages array will increment, in this situation i will create a notification. I need to keep this 'controlling' routing alive forever, whether in foreground or background. Does GCD give such a solution do anyone have any idea?
Just simply play a mute audio file in loop in the background, OR, ping the user's location in the background. Yes, that will drain the battery a bit, but it's a simple hack for in-home applications. Just remember to enable the background types in your Info.plist!
Note: "[...] I fetch (via GET) in main thread." This is not a good approach. You should never fetch any network resources on the main thread. Why? Because your GUI, which is maintained by the main thread, will become unresponsive whenever a fetch isn't instantaneous. Any lag spike on the network results in a less than desirable user experience.
Answer: Aside from the listed special situations, you can't run background apps. The way I see it:
Don't put the app in the background. (crappy solution)
Try putting another "entity" between the app and the "server". I don't know why you "need to control the server at least one per minute" but perhaps you can delegate this "control" to another process outside the device?
.
iOS app -> some form of proxy server -> server which requires
"babysitting" every minute.
I'm playing around with windows azure and I would like to build a clouded server application that receives messages from many different clients, such as mobile and desktop.
I would like to build the client so that they work while in "offline-mode", i.e. I would like the client to build up a local queue of messages that are sent to the azure server as soon as they get online.
Can I accomplish this using wcf and/or azure queing mechanism, so that I don't have to worry about whether the client is online or offline when I write the code?
You won't need queuing in the cloud to accomplish this. For the client app to be "offline enabled" you need to do queuing on the client. For this there are many options, a local database, xml files, etc. Whenever the app senses network availability you can upload your queue to Azure. And yes, you can use WCF for that.
For the client queue/sync stuff you could take a look at the Sync Framework.
I haven't found a great need for the queue so far. Maybe it's just that I'm not seeing it in my app view. Could also be that the data you can store in the queue is minimal. You basically store short text strings (like record ids), and then you have to do something with the ID when you pull it from the queue, such as look it up, delete it, whatever.
In my app, I didn't use the queue at all, just as Peter suggests. I wrote directly to table storage (accessed via it's REST interface using StorageClient) from the client. If you want to look at a concrete example, take a look at http://www.netalerts.mobi/traffic. Like you, I wanted to learn Azure so I built a small web site.
There's a worker_role that wakes up every 60 seconds. Using one thread, it retrieves any new data from it's source (screen scraping a web page). New entries are stored directly in table storage (no need for a queue). Another thread deletes entries in table storage that are older than a specified threshold (there's no issue with running multiple threads against table storage). And then I'm working on the third thread which is designed to send notifications to handheld devices.
The app itself is a web_role, obviously.