I am currently working on my first Newsstand app. The basic gist of it is there are two XML feeds. If no subscription is detected, it loads the free.xml which just has a couple of free issues on it. If a subscription receipt is detected and valid, it shows the listing of all current issues. The XML just has title, link, description, and pubDate tags in it. The link is where it is located and the app downloads it and then displays it. My issue is how to send out newsstand notifications. I know it is slightly different than regular Push, in that it has ability to trigger automatic downloads of new issues. I currently use xtify.com for standard push notifications, but I could use some guidance on how to set up notifications for the newsstand app.
To trigger automatic downloads in the Newsstand app, you have to send an extra key-value pair as follows along with other keys. The new key content-available with value 1 is responsible for invoking the application even in the background.
{
"aps":{
"content-available":1,
}
}
If your current push notifications service provider allow you to add this key, its well and good, otherwise you have to use your own server and setup push notifications and add this key to the payload.
In addition to this, make sure:
You enable Newsstand in iTunes Connect
In your Device Settings > Newsstand > Automatic Content Download must be "ON" for your app
Push notifications are "ON" for your app.
For more information on Newsstand applications, following tutorial is very helpful, please go through it. Understanding it answers many of your doubts.
http://www.viggiosoft.com/blog/blog/2011/10/17/ios-newsstand-tutorial/
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I'm using with success the flutter local notification plugin. Now I'm struggling for create a page with all notifications.
Is there a way to collect all incoming local notifications of my app (even if dismissed and/or not clicked) in a list (the classic notification page like FB etc.)
I only notice that I can track the tapped notification but not only the arrival notification.
Thanks!
This unfortunately is not possible, because notifications are not stored anywhere. They exist in memory on the device, until the user dismisses them, or they are replaced with a message of a similar ID, or the OS just removes them altogether.
Your best bet, is to generate a table on your mobile backend, that will store these notifications (the same ones that will be broadcasted to the users notification center), then get the app to read directly from this table, and store it on a local SQLite database.
These notifications that are broadcasted, will need to be sent from the backend itself, with the exact same content, as that being stored on the table I mentioned. This will ensure data integrity between the notification center, and that of the app.
[EDIT]
Please make sure that you use FCM (Firebase Cloud Messaging) for mobile push notifications. These are completely free, as per the documentation:
https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging
For Tutorials, please look at these:
https://medium.com/#jun.chenying/flutter-tutorial-part3-push-notification-with-firebase-cloud-messaging-fcm-2fbdd84d3a5e
https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-add-push-notifications-to-flutter-app/
Is there a way in Notification hub to preview the push notification on simulators/devices before they are pushed to real user's devices? if not, what approach can be utilized here?
Thanks,
Vineet
At this time a preview feature is not available on Azure Notification hub.You can leave your feedback/ feature request on Uservoice. All of the feedback you share in these forums will be monitored and reviewed by the Microsoft engineering teams responsible for building Azure.
You can successfully send push notifications to the Android Emulator. You cannot do the same with the iOS Simulator, due to the fact the Simulator just doesn't allow for it.
You can also use a physical device and using a unique tag, or just logging out a registration or installation ID, you could send a notification directly to your own development devices before sending out to real users. This would allow you to validate behavior and appearances before sending to real users. So basically the same process you would use to validate any kind of UI changes before sending an App update out to users. Try on your own devices first.
Hope that helps! :)
I am building a TVOS app for the new Apple TV that needs to get notifications from a server to update it's display. Remote notifications are not allowed with TVOS, and it actually displays an error when you try to register the app for remote notifications.
With this being said, are there any alternatives to what I need?
To clarify:
- The app stays running indefinitely, showing a display.
- When the user adds content to the display, I want to notify any apps that are logged in to the same user to update the display.
- I cannot use remote notifications.
Please let me know if this makes sense, and thank you in advance for your help!
What part of the registration errors out for you? Notification dialogs and banners may not really make sense on tvOS, but can you send a silent push notification? All you need to do to register for these is
[application registerForRemoteNotifications];
You do not need to display the request dialog to the user for permission for silent notifications (you do need to have the remote notifications entitlement though.)
According to Apple's documents here, they allow CloudKit. CloudKit subscriptions rely on silent push notifications that I would assume would work on tvOS (without them it would severely cripple CloudKit)
If that still does't work, then you could create your own long polling connection (essentially, you would be making your own custom push notifications). It would only be able to send messages to devices that have the app opened however.
I guess you can have the app poll a web server at a given interval to check if any updates have been made...
I am developing one application.In that i want to get the latest version of my app information using Apple Push Notifications.So please tell me how to do this one.I seen in some posts,in that they mension like configure the APNS in apple site and send abinary information to apple service provider.Is it sufficient to get the latest version information.
You will need to create your own server, to store the identifiers for your users. With this, you can then send notifications to users who have allowed notifications from your app.
Doing this can be quite complicated, so you may want to use a service such as Urban Airship who will provide the server, and instructions on how to implement APNS in your app.
With this done, it can be quite simple to send a push notification to your users from their website.
How reliable do you find push notification on the iPhone to be? Does it improve when moving from the sandbox to production server?
I am testing (with the sandbox of course) and have found that notifications are often delayed or not received at all. I am not talking about sending multiple messages and only the last one arriving, as the documentation indicates, but any notification never showing up.
Also, I noticed that if I send a notification with an alert, and then send one with just a badge number, that the second notification will close the alert even after it's already opened. Does this happen between apps as well? For instance, if I send an alert for my app, and then the Facebook app sends a badge, will the Facebook badge close my alert window?
I have no development experience with iPhone apps, but I do know that if you have an unofficial unlocked phone (by using pwnage tool/blackrain etc) then the PUSH notifications might NEVER go through. In fact, it does go through, but to another user's iPhone.
This is because when an iPhone is unofficially network unlocked, it uses the Unique ID of some random individual's iPhone, which causes Push notifications to arrive on either phone (and yes, sometimes also on the unlocked phone it was intended for, but usually not)
Not sure if this is the case with you though, but AFAIK the service is pretty reliable if you follow Apple's rules. :)
The push notification seams better on production. You can always test it using ad-hoc distrbution which uses the production chanel to send the notifications.
I can confirm that production push notifications using
Production Push Notification Certificate
Adhoc Distribution Mobile Provisioning
TestFlight deployment
Production APNS server
works well, no need to publish your app to test production notifications
Production push notifications are not always received. If notifications are machine gunned 1 second apart the first one is received and the rest are not sent, thats my experience.
Where as on a windows phone, they are all received using the windows notification service.