Apple Push notifications server - Feedback always returns zero tuples - iphone

Question

I am developing an iPhone App that uses Apple Push Notifications. On the iPhone side everything is fine, on the server side I have a problem. Notifications are sent correctly however when I try to query the feedback service to obtain a list of devices from which the App has been uninstalled, I always get zero results. I know that I should obtain one result as the App has been uninstalled from one of my test devices. After 24 hours and more I still have no results from the feedback service..
Any ideas? Does anybody know how long it takes for the feedback service to recognize that my App has been uninstalled from my test device? Could it be due to the sandbox environment?

Answer 1

I have just had exactly the same problem:
int bytesReceived = 0;
byte[] feedbackPacket = new byte[38]; // Each feedback should always be 38 bytes long
bytesReceived = stream.Read(feedbackPacket, 0, feedbackPacket.Length);
while(bytesReceived > 0)
{
ProcessFeedback(feedbackPacket);
Array.Clear(feedbackPacket, 0, feedbackPacket.Length);
bytesReceived = stream.Read(feedbackPacket, 0, feedbackPacket.Length);
}
On the sandbox, the above always returned 0 bytesReceived. I ran this on the live host, sending a single notification to a device, removing the app and sending a second. The feedback service work within a second of sending the second request.
One thing I haven't found is how often to call the feedback service however. I'll calling every 10 mins at the moment.

Answer 2

I had the same problem with sandbox environment. Zero tuples return by the feedback service.
I switched to production environment to test my code and everything worked fine. As soon as I uninstalled the app from the device and sent a pair of push notification, this device appeared in the feedback list.

Answer 3

Although I can't say definetly it does not work in sandbox environment, i'm pretty sure about it. In production environment, after uninstalling my application, I sent a few (i guess 3) push notifications. Then feedback service returned results other than zero tuples. (about in ten minutes)
It is not related with this case, but also in order to get notifications and also get feedback results, your network should allow ports that APNS use.

Answer 4

As Zakum said in a comment, the device will not get added to the list if you delete the last push-enabled app.
(And make sure to give it enough time - maybe 10 to 20 minutes.)
From Apple Documentation:
If you remove your app from your device or computer and then send a push notification to it, you would expect to have the device token rejected, and the invalidated device token should appear on the feedback service. However, if this was the last push-enabled app on the device or computer, it will not show up in the feedback service. This is because deleting the last app tears down the persistent connection to the push service before the notice of the deletion can be sent.
You can work around this by leaving at least one push-enabled app on the device or computer in order to keep the persistent connection up. To keep the persistent connection to the production environment up, just install any free push-enabled app from the App Store and you should then be able to delete your app and see it appear in the feedback service.
Recall that each push environment has its own persistent connection. So to keep the persistent connection to the sandbox environment up, install another development push-enabled app.