What Kind of Service Do I Need to Use for Sending User-to-User Push Notifications on iOS - mbaas

I need a little help with understanding what to look for when selecting a service to use for allowing my application's users to create accounts and send push notifications to each other. I do not have any backend service experience, except for with Parse, and I don't understand some of the functionality requirements.
I want users to be able to register an account and add other users. Then, I would like the users to be able to select specific users from their "friends" list in order to send a push notification to each selected user for a meeting. However, I honestly don't even know where to start.
It seems that many of the services that I have looked at are set up for sending targeted push notifications to groups of users from a dashboard (seemingly for marketing and other purposes).
I am completely new to servers and backends, except for a little activity with Parse, so can anyone recommend a direction for me to take for integrating such functionality in an iOS application that I am working on?

You can use mbaas providers like built.io backend, It provides push notification functionality on object creation event, and a set of ACL can be specified on these objects. This will act as a filter criteria as to who are the allowed to receive this push notification.
You can refer to their docs here https://docs.built.io

Related

Firebase Cloud Massaging - Push Notifications Server Keys Handle

I want to add push notification to my app with Firebase Cloud Messaging but I don't know the right way to set this up.
My App Logic is: I have multiple customers (companies) who host their own server's own database and their own users. Some of the employees of the different customers will download the app to receive push notifications from their company's server which implements the firebase admin SDK to send push notifications.
How is it possible to handle all customers from one FCB or is it even possible?
So the customer can just enter the created „server key/topic or project id / UUID“ to his server configuration and can receive the push notification.
They should also not be allowed to see any data from other customers or send messages to them.
At the end of the day, I need to handle all customer
Using the Admin SDK allows one to send messages, it does not allow you to receive messages. So from that perspective it sounds like the approach suits your needs.
The customers using the Admin SDK will also get full administrative access to your entire Firebase project though. So if you use any other Firebase products aside from Cloud Messaging, that would be a security risk.

Is it possible to create Custom Push Notifications with a REST service backed server?

I have an OpenEdge database, I have created a REST Service and am able to CRUD to it from the outside World.
I have created a Nativescript app that can pull data from the REST service etc, but now i want Push notifications.
I know about the Progress Kinvey backend, and Firebase backend with their push notification features but i don't want to use them.
is there a way to create my own Push notifications on my REST server etc?
So first I would like you to understand how Push Notification works just to make sure we are on same page,
Once your app is installed, you can query for a unique token and save it in your backend for future use. Whenever you want to send a push notification, you have communicate with APNs (Apple Push Notification Server) / FCM (Firebase Cloud Messaging) in order to send a push notification to your iOS / Android device using the unique token you acquired earlier.
So now you must use Firebase as that is the only way you can communicate with Android, yet you may choose to communicate with APNs yourself. But in my opinion, it will be a overhead for you as both have their own protocols, you will have to distinguish your tokens between iOS & Android, use appropriate protocols etc.,
I would suggest you to go with just Firebase plugin (until you are super familiar with APNs already), so you don't have to worry which platform the token belongs to, update / revoke invalid tokens over time etc., FCM has pretty decent APIs & Documentation that can make your life easy here.
i strongly recommend you to see my answer here answer here.
from it:
when you want to pull anything from place_1(e.g. api) to place_2(e.g. browser_client) you most have an identifier of the
place_1_resource (which commonly is the uniform-resource-locator of
api)
when you want to push anything from place_1(e.g. notification_central_server) to place_2(cellphone_client) you most
have an identifier of the place_2_resource
if you don't have any identifier for a cellphone which you want to
send it a notification, your server dont know where to send that
notification so we need a resource_identifier_like for cellphones
which is actually a device_token_like and you have just one approach
to get this device_token_like and that is the FCM/APNS

Custom Notification Depending on action

SWIFT 3 / Firebase
app like instagram/Facebook
Notifications
I am working on letting users know when another user e.g. liked their post, made a friend request etc.
I set up everything for cloud messaging with firebase and can send bulk messages at all my devices.
Now I want to introduce notifications which contain the current user, the user who did the action and what happened.
Unfortunately I did not find anything about this despite the general implementing of firebase cloud messaging.
My questions are:
1: Do i have to structure a database (e.g. .child("notifications").child(userId).... ?
2: How do I get the token from the stranger user I address with the notification?
3: How can I make the input variable?
I am happy about all kinds of help!

How to call Web service Continuously in ios

I have an ios app.
In which i have multi user account.So multiple user can Login.
When one user see other user profile and if that user is also online i want to notify him.
I can't get how to implement it.
If i have to continuously check some flag value on server if someone has checked their profile or how can i handle it?
Remote notifications is the way to do it. The logic on when and who has to be notified can be handled at the server.
You may have seen lots of apps asking for permissions to send notification. The downside being if the user denies that permission.
Polling from client side can also be one of the methods which can be used and but would require the client to do most of the computation.
So all in all, its a call you got to take considering what you are building.

How to check if a person in your iPhone contact list has an app installed?

I want to allow people to privately share data with each other using their contacts list to select people to share with. I'm planning on using Push Notifications to notify others that they have been shared with, but how can I handle those that do not have the app installed?
The cases are that I have their phone # and/or email. I can simply send them a message saying "X wants to share Y with you", but how can I determine if I need to send a Push Notification or an email/text?
If you're looking for API then you're out of luck. You can always collect this personal data server-side with agreement of your users. There you can also manage groups and other community relations.
Check here:
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/RemoteNotificationsPG/ApplePushService/ApplePushService.html
The crux of it though will be that you will need to store a token when the device is registered anyway to be able to send notifications to them, so you can use that.
And using The Feedback Service alluded to in the documentation, you can remove the token, should it fail too often.
But, as rokjarc said, if you're expecting a third-party API to exist, you're pretty much out of luck. Apple ahs done most of the work for you already anyway.
When the app registeres for push notifications you need to pass additional data to your server. The user could input their own email/phone which will be sent to the server so that users can find each other. The email/phone can be stored alongside with the push token. When someone wants to share something, you would search the corresponding push token in the database and send the notification through APNS. Note there can be multiple push tokens for one email or phone i.e. when a user has multiple devices.
The users of your app should be aware of the data which is stored on your server and should have the option to delete it. Also use the APNS feedback service to detect and remove invalid push tokens.