I am new iPhone developer,
Can anybody suggest me what should i do here:
I have built an App in which i am finding how far the user from end location or a goal, So I have a given range (nearBy) here, if the user came within the range , he/she got a message or alert.
My question is how can notify the user? how could I show that message?
I am greatly appreciative of any guidance or help.
UILocalNotification
Instances of UILocalNotification represent notifications that an application can schedule for presentation to its users at specific dates and times. The operating system is responsible for delivering the notification at the proper time; the application does not have to be running for this to happen. Although local notifications are similar to remote notifications in that they are used for displaying alerts, playing sounds, and badging application icons, they are composed and delivered locally and do not require connection with remote servers.
You should take a look at UILocalNotification Class Reference.
Related
I am writing a messaging app in Swift where people can chat similar to how text messages or other popular chat apps work. The supporting API is on AWS, written in C#.
There are some points of interest here:
Hoping to avoid third party stuff like Firebase, etc, but open to listening to advice
Alert notifications are not desired for now - no popups, banners, etc. Simply want to show message bubbles arrive in real time on one viewcontroller - if and only if the person is staring at the message screen. If they're somewhere else on the app, nothing happens.
We don't want to prompt the user to ask them if they're OK with this app sending notifications because we're not sending them banners or anything visual, aside from a new chat arriving. Is that a requirement with APNS? I feel like this means someone can say NO, and then we have no way to update the chat app in real time, which won't fly.
I assume a simple approach would be some sort of timer/loop that runs from the message viewcontroller, where every second or two it hits the API and asks if there are new messages, but that seems inherently wrong to me - the app must be robust, and there could be thousands or hundreds of thousands of people using this - that's a lot of API requests, and in many cases there could be no new messages, thus a wasted call. This is clearly not the way to go, correct?
Question # 1
I was thinking, then, that I should use APNS, however am not sure if it requires you to prompt the user to ask them for permission to receive anything from Apple? Again my concern is the chat bubbles should come in at real time and don't want to give the user the ability to somehow not see these (breaking the app)
If APNS is the way to go, and I must prompt them, then I assume the flow is I will gather my device ids (created in appdelegate, saved in my C# db, and associated to each message thread) and whenever someone types a message, it goes to my API, I save it in the message database table, and then I send out a message to APNS to everyone's device id.
Apple queues this up, and sends to everyone, and if they're on the screen, then the message comes in.
Is this how I should leverage APNS to achieve what I want?
Question # 2 I've seen others recommend using SNS (in conjunction with APNS) however I don't understand why. Doesn't APNS both act as a proper queue, as well as a notification service, thus invalidating the need to use AWS's SNS/SQS at all? It seems redundant to me but maybe I just don't understand the idea behind why you need both technologies.
Appreciate anyone's time in advance if they can shed some light on this for me!
Thanks!
Question 1
Even if you're using WebSockets (As #stevenpcurtis mentioned), you still need to inform user about the fact that user received message when application is in background/suspended. And yes, you must "force" your user to enable notifications for the application and explain why he needs it. Empirically, if user installs messenger, he understands what are notifications used for and why he enables it.
Question 2
From the mobile perspective SNS will still deliver Push notifications when user receives notification while the application is in background or suspended. From the backend perspective you can use SNS.
Conclusion:
From the mobile perspective you have 2 modes:
Application is active - it's generally up to you how to receive messages. (Web Sockets, pushes, e.t.c.)
Application is in the background or is suspended: You need a tool to inform user about changes without having a control on application. This is the job for Push Notification Service. The way you will send pushes from the backend is up to you.
You can also check This question to get some more information.
I am building a live chat app for the iPhone, and for this it is necessary to ensure that the operator is online and to keep the flow of data going.
After much search it seams to be only two options for similar kind of behavior;
UILocalNotification, only works if I have some scheduled information notice to be sent
Push Notification, for pushing data to the phone
The problem with push notification seams to be that I cannot ensure that the user is available, or in any way talk with the app without the user re-opening it. This way it seams impossible for me to know if the user is online, to update data in the app without the user having to manually open it, etc.
So, what I ask for, is it in any way possible to keep the app active in the background thus ensuring the operator is online and notify of incoming chat sessions?
Thanks a lot for your help guys!
Unfortunately the answer is no. I take it you mean text chat and not VoIP (which CAN run in the background)? Your best bet would be Push Notifications, as you would not be able to monitor anything from the app itself when it is in the background.
I have an iphone app that has a 30second process that does some network IO. Basically, while the app is in the background, i want this process to run every hour (actually once a day, but if it fails i want it to re-run in an hours time).
With the background features of ios 4, is this possible? If so, how? What are the limitations that i'll come up against?
Thanks so much!
Take a look at Apple's documentation about running code in the background.
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/iphone/conceptual/iphoneosprogrammingguide/BackgroundExecution/BackgroundExecution.html
There are few different ways of approaching backgrounded tasks. The only apps that can have fully backgrounded processes are "audio", "voip" and "location" apps, and this needs to be declared in the Info.plist.
If your app is not of this type, you'll probably find it difficult to do what you want easily. There are methods which allow you to keep your app alive in the background for a finite period of time (also at that link), but eventually your app will be shut down.
Local Notifications will only prompt the user to open the app - do you really want to have an alert pop-up on the phone every 30 seconds?
I was making some kind of similar research, have a look at this SO answer in case you didn't manage to find it before. Applications like DataMan or Data Usage must have some sort of periodic code execution in the background, so I'm not 100% convinced that what you're asking for is impossible..
I believe that Using Local notifications will help....
check following....
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/RemoteNotificationsPG/IPhoneOSClientImp/IPhoneOSClientImp.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008194-CH103-SW1
An application can create and schedule a local notification, and the operating system then delivers it at the schedule date and time. If it delivers it when the application is not active in the foreground, it displays an alert, badges the application icon, or plays a sound—whatever is specified in the UILocalNotification object. If the application is running in the foreground, there is no alert, badging, or sound; instead, the application:didReceiveLocalNotification: method is called if the delegate implements it.
The delegate can inspect the properties of the notification and, if the notification includes custom data in its userInfo dictionary, it can access that data and process it accordingly. On the other hand, if the local notification only badges the application icon, and the user in response launches the application, the application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: method is invoked, but no UILocalNotification object is included in the options dictionary.
I'm making an iPhone app. I can receive UDP messages using AsyncUdpSocket. I want the app running in background, and when receive a message, an UIAlertView is displaying to the user, and he can enter in the app, or ignore the alert.
Is it possible to detect a message when the app is running in background.
Do I need something to execute my code in this method?
- (void)applicationDidEnterBackground:(UIApplication *)application {
}
I saw lot of tutorials, with timer, but I don't need timer to wake up my app. Also I read that's it's possible while playing music, tracking position or using VOIP.
Do I need to play a fake song to keep my app running? or to do something like that?
This app is for security, for example if someone is touching or moving your motorbike/computer/whatever else, your iPhone can alert you and prevents from stealing.
I read other threads similar but didn't find an answer.
Thank you guys for giving me tips, or any help /sample.
You can't run in the background on a non-jailbroken phone without being in one of those three categories of app, and Apple’s really unlikely to approve your app if you use that facility for another purpose. UDP probably isn’t the best solution for this anyway—if your phone leaves the network that the other device (whatever it is) is on, it won’t receive the notification at all, whether or not it’s in the foreground. You’re probably a lot better off using the push notification API.
This seems like a perfect case to use Apple Push Notifications (APN). You app can register to receive the notifications and the phone will alert the user with any combination of badging, messages, or sounds. Sounds like you already have a server that is sending the UDP messages, so incorporating APN should be minimal. Especially if you use a third-party to send the push notification, such as Urban Airship. (I am not affiliated with them, but have used them on a large commercial project.)
By definition, local events are not triggered by receiving a message.
i m making an application where data is accesed from website and displayed with an application.i have made an action which will tell the user that new data has arrived.this will work properly if the application is open .but if the application is closed than ,is there any way to tell the user that new data has arrived ,,so that he can open the application and check the data?
If you are using the Apple Push Notification Service (APNs), your messages will be delivered whether the application is running or not. For information on how to control what information is presented to the user, read the Apple Push Notification Programming Guide.
You should use Apple Push Notification Service, like codelark said.
I would recommend looking into Urban Airship for help getting started. It's a third party service, but it makes things much easier. Urban Airship does have their own tutorials and code samples which may be easier than Apple's.
As a follow up to the reference to apple push notification, as of ios4.0 I believe you, you may have a few more options, 1) you can send local notifications (just like push notifications, but they originate from inside your app) that could be timed to be delivered even if the app is not running..assuming you know approximately how long it will take for data to arrive. 2) if your data update will occur soon after the app closed.. your app can request a certain amount of time to complete an operation (even though the user has closed the app) and wait for the data, then send a local notification to tell the person to come back into the app. 3) if your functions based on gps updates, music streaming, or voip you can set a flag so your app continues to run in the background
sorry for the unstructuredness of the answer, this was just off the top of my head, hope it helps