I have implemented all recommended methods in AppDelegate to get working Remote Notifications service.
I can accept them while running, while launching and while turned off.
But there is an issue, since I can't work with many received notifications while in background. I can work only with latest notification.
What is recommended manual to do that? How can I got all notifications received while in background? Is it only solvable via manual call to my service provider (sender of apns data)?
With all the projects I've worked on there hasn't been a way to locally store this information if the push notification is dismissed. In all those cases we used a small file on the server that the app would connect to and pull when it became active again. There was also some place in the app where the user could see all their notifications which, again, were stored on the server for quick retrieval.
With the way I understand push notifications to be setup, if the notification is dismissed the system discards it. It'll perform anything it's supposed to do (such as update the badge number and play the correct sound) but any additional information specific to that notification is lost.
Not sure if this helps, but if you just want to know how many notifications you have missed while you were in background. You can create a variable which contains notification number and store this in the app every time you handle notification. When you come out of background and receive a new notification you can subtract the new number with the stored number to find out the number of missed notifications. I don't think there is a way where iOS can give you complete data associated with all the notification device have received while the app was in background.
The best solution is to keep a list of sent notifications with all relevant data on your server, so the app can access that data when it launches. Sending multiple notifications with data that is not stored on the server can be risky, because the application only receives the notification when the user opens the app from that notification, so if they tap on one notification, the app will only every receive that one.
If you have them all in a list on your server, the app can simply go and pull that list down, and process it, making sure no data is lost.
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 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...
My app is receiving APNs sent from server to Apple backend. Naturally a user may not open the app once a notification arrives to user's device. In meantime my server may push more notifications. They all contain some user data that is important when a notification is processed. So how to deal with it? iOS won't bundle and give me a batch, will it?
Here are ways how I am going to tackle it, none of which is simple.
Server keeps track of not seen data and upon arriving a new request always sends a batch of all new notifications, reflecting the count as badge count.
Client is opened by taping on notification popup. In this case it has all needed data in didReceiveRemoteNotification.
OR
Client ignores notification popup and opens app (possibly later) by tapping on app icon. In this case didReceiveRemoteNotification is not called and thus app has to fetch all needed data from server.
OR
Server never sends any user data and client always checks for new stuff every time it starts or fetches data in didReceiveRemoteNotification.
Anything else? Something simpler I am missing?
Number 4 is the right approach. There is no guarantee that any of your app code will run when an APN is received, except on iOS7. So when your app starts, it has to check with your servers for any new information that it should display.
It's simplest to code this to alway ask your servers for the latest information to display, rather than rely on the information in the APN. Use the information in the APN only to determine which new information to navigate to, so that the app displays whatever the user tapped on.
This has changed with iOS7, where you can use the remote-notification background mode to be launched whenever a push message arrives. See https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UIKit/Reference/UIApplicationDelegate_Protocol/Reference/Reference.html#//apple_ref/occ/intfm/UIApplicationDelegate/application:didReceiveRemoteNotification:fetchCompletionHandler:
In didReceiveRemoteNotification, is it possible to see if there are other/older push notifications that haven't been responded to?
I have a scenario where each notification contains different data, and unless you exit app and select every single notification for your app. You app wont be able to get to that data.
I'm thinking that iOS must be storing that information in an array somewhere, but haven't been able to find anything through Google.
Advice please? Last chance saloon would be re-writing it to poll a server for notifications.
You cannot guarantee that your app will ever receive any push notification sent to it. The only way it does is if it is running when it receives the message or if the notification is used to launch your app.
I would recommend implementing a web service on your server that allows your app to pull down the data it needs from these notifications when it is running.
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.