I've created an app that displays an RSS feed.
I wonder if it is possible to get a notification when a new rss update.
Do I have to use push notification? (have heard that it is difficult)
Yes, push notifications are the way to go. It's not that complicated but you need some infrastructure on your side.
You'll need a server with a database that stores all the push notification recipients.
If you only have one hardcoded RSS feed just send a notification to all your clients if a new item is available.
If one can add own feeds to the app you need a database which saves the subscribed feeds for each push notification recipient. Then you have to check for new feed entries and send out notifications to the devices that are subscribed to that feed.
There are plenty of tutorials for push notifications out there. Both server and client side.
depending on the user base of your app, urbanairship.com is probably the easiest way to implement push in your app. With them they handle all server side pushes and you can send a million free push notifications a month.
So if you add their codebase to you app, you can send 200000 users upto 5 notifications a monthm each.
Related
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/
I am creating an app using Swift and Parse as my backend platform. In my application a User can send an invitation to be connected to another user and as soon as they are connected the app should send notifications to remind the user about his friend’s birthday.
In this scenario I have two moments in which the app should send a notification:
1- When user A sends an invitation to user B, user B should receive a notification
2- When it’s user’s B birthday, user A should receive a notification and vice versa
I created a Parse object called AppNotification that is responsible for storing information about the notifications the user should receive. So when a user sends an invitation to another user I am adding a line in the AppNotification table, the same happens when it’s a birthday of a friend. Using this I can calculate the number of unread notifications and show it to the user in the UI using the components badge.
My question is more related to the best way to send the birthday notification. What I am considering is:
1- When user A sends and invitation to user B I have to send a push notification to user B.
2- As soon as the users are connected I can schedule local notifications to remind them about the birthday. This solution would use Local Notifications instead of Push Notifications.
3- Or create a Job in Parse that will be executed every day and will read all the users whose birthday is today and send a push notification to his friends. This solution would use Push notifications and I would not need to worry about scheduling local notifications.
Between the points 2 and 3 which one is the best solution? Is there any other approach I could use? When should I consider using Local Notifications other than Remote Notifications?
Thank you in advance.
Regarding points 2 and 3: there are pros and cons for both options: Having the reminders as local notifications is basically what your local calendar app does, i.e. you don't need a connection the Internet / Parse. However: what happens if one party (A) decides that she no longer wants to be a "friend" (of B)? Should notifications still be sent? If not, you could easily delete the scheduled notification on the server. This would also ensure that the other party (B) wouldn't receive notifications of a former friend (A) if she didn't open the app in the meantime and synced the list of friends.
There are of course more pros and cons, so it is really a matter of your preference and possibly other constraints (e.g. should an active internet connection be necessity?).
This is the first time that I approach the push notification service and I'm little bit confused. I 'd like to have just some conceptual help, not code.
I need to build an app that should receive and register for different kind of notifications. For instance in my app I'd like that users could register for PROMO notifications category and NEWS notifications category, I'd like that they could choose which one they want to be notified.
Reading the Apple doc, that was not so clear to me, it seems that once the app device is registered I receive just one token and seems impossible to receive more tokens for different kind of registration(NEWS and PROMO for instance), because the token is related to the app and the device. Is that correct?
The other thing that is not so clear to me is, if a device is registered for a specific notification is it possible to send the notification only to a set o devices?
If nothing of that is offered by Apple Push services do you think that is possible to manage everything like that:
-I register the app device for notification if (PROMO || NEWS) are selected
-I get the token
-I send the token to my server giving also as additional info about the service which the user wants to subscribe
-The server (provider) register the token and the kind of subscription (PROMO || NEWS)
-Later when I have a notification to push I ask the server all the tokens registered for that specific category and then I send the notification only to those devices registered for that category.
Thanks for helping me out I'm really confused.
"Reading the Apple doc, that was not so clear to me, it seems that once the app device is registered I receive just one token and seems impossible to receive more tokens for different kind of registration(NEWS and PROMO for instance), because the token is related to the app and the device. Is that correct?"
YES
The other thing that is not so clear to me is, if a device is registered for a specific notification is it possible to send the notification only to a set o devices?
YES, you need a DB where you connect a Push Token with the related Services (promo | news). If you have a new Promo Push Message you send the message to all related token. on the app site, everytime the user change the categorie (promo / news) you should prpvide these infos to your service with the push token.
These are all problems that you have to solve yourself on the server side. The push service simply provides a means to send a single message to a single device. You have to figure out yourself which messages you want to send to which devices. Each message has to be sent individually, there's no way to "broadcast" a message to all your users directly.
You could think of the push tokens as email addresses – of course, one email address might be subscribed to different newsletters from the same publisher, but it's the publisher's job (yours) to figure out whom to send which newsletters, not the email provider's (Apple's).
You should think of the push notification registration like my I send the user push notifications. Not what kind of push notification can I send the user.
Then you need to do serverside filtering on you categories, like the ones in your example promo and news.
The perferance of the user should be stored on your server, so you will know what kind of notification to send to which user.
Is it possible to tell user what were about recently received push notifications ? I mean, if user clicks cancel when push was received, there is a badge on the icon of my application, but that's all. I think this is not user friendly and such notifications have no sense. When user opens an application, he knows that there is something new in it, but don't know exactly what. Do I need to make some requests to my web server to have information about my last pushes or I'm missing something and there is another way ?
From the implementations of push notifications I've worked with so far, you'll need to make a call to your server when the app actually starts up in order for the app to know what the new information is. I don't believe there's any way to store received push notifications unless your app is opened and handling them in the app delegate. Otherwise if push notification is closed it's discarded.
In all the apps I've worked with that utilized push notifications there was a place in the app where all the recent notifications were displayed after a call to the server was made to get the whole list.
I need to display a push notification on new updates in the xml feed.
Had gone through http://mobiforge.com/developing/story/programming-apple-push-notification-services and tried that sample code successfully.
But what should I need to do ,to create push notification while new entries come in RSS feed?
You need to write a push notification provider server that sends the actual remote push notification as well.
I suggest you have a look at this link
http://blog.boxedice.com/2009/07/10/how-to-build-an-apple-push-notification-provider-server-tutorial/