iOS - Handling pushed notifications with APNS - iphone

Considering that I receive a pushed notification on my iPhone.
What happens:
If the application is started: is there a way to get the payload? Do I see the notification on my screen?
If the application is not started, is there a way to get the payload?
Thx for your answers

First of all push notifications are not “strong”, if you simply let a notification sit for long enough (e.g. phone turned off for many days) it will get discarded. You need to do some custom back-end processing to persist the content sent in notifications.
In the UIApplicationDelegate protocol there’s application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:. If your app is launched by the user tapping the right button in an alert of a push notification, the launchOptions dictionary bound to the method call will contain information regarding that notification; if your app is already running then application:didReceiveRemoteNotification: (also in the delegate protocol) will get called instead.
So,
If the application is started, and you implement application:didReceiveRemoteNotification: then yes you get the payload. Otherwise, nothing happens.
If the application is not started at the time the notification is sent, then the user taps on the alert of the notification and launches your app, your app gets the payload if it implements application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:. Otherwise, you get nothing.

Related

any option to know if apple app get the push notification?

I build xcode app that get push notification, the main problem is that the push notification is very critical for me.
so I want to check if the push notification is delivered to the device with the app installed, I understand that if the iphone dosn't have internet connecction / 3G the push notification is not getting to the device.
how can I check if the device get the notification or not?
how can I check if the APNS successful to deliver the push notification?
I want to send sms if the push notification is not deliver to the device so I think about the idea to get the notification event when it's open by the push notification, and to send request to my server so i can know if the push notification is successful deliver or not. the main problem is that the user need to open the app every time he get the notification and in the night it's a problem. so this option is not good for me.
I check the feedback server push notification but i don't find any info that I can get if the push notification is delivered or not
any idea??
With iOS7 you have a new method called
application:didReceiveRemoteNotification:fetchCompletionHandler:
which you probably could use for your task. From Apple's Docs:
Implement this method if your app supports the remote-notification background mode.
...
When a push notification arrives, the system displays the notification to the user and
launches the app in the background (if needed) so that it can call this method. Use this
method to download any data related to the push notification. When your method is done,
call the block in the handler parameter.
Unlike the application:didReceiveRemoteNotification: method, which is called only when
your app is running, the system calls this method regardless of the state of your app.
The short answer, you can't, since APNS is one way. However, since an app can execute arbitrary code upon receipt of a notification, you can use this to say, send an http request to your own server when the notification is recieved.
There are any number of reason why push notifications might not get delivered to your user, or might not be delivered in a timely manner. Apple does not provide any mechanism for you to query the status of a push notification that you have sent.
If your app is currently running on the user's device and the user is accepting notifications for your app, you can implement the following method in your app delegate. It would be called whenever a push notification is received and in this method you could send a request back to your server to indicate the message was received. However this will only work while the user is running your app.
- (void)application:(UIApplication *)application didReceiveRemoteNotification:(NSDictionary *)userInfo
In general though, it sounds like you'e relying on push notifications for something you shouldn't. From Apple's Local and Push Notification Programming Guide:
Important Because delivery is not guaranteed, you should not depend on
the remote-notifications facility for delivering critical data to an
application via the payload. And never include sensitive data in the
payload. You should use it only to notify the user that new data is
available.
There is no way to find out whether the notification was delivered to the device or no. APNS is a one way service. If there is no internet connection on the device then the APNS server will hold the last notification for some period of time which is no specified by Apple. If a new notification is sent to APNS for delivery then the old notification data is lost and replaced by the new data if its undelivered. If the notification is delivered then also the old notification data is deleted on the APNS server.
Please go through the following link : Apple Push Notification
Hope this helps you...........
If you are using JAVAPNS to send the APNS notification, you can use the below:
List<PushedNotification> notifications =
Push.combined("alert", badge, "default", "cert.p12", "certpassword", true, deviceToken);
for (PushedNotification notification : notifications) {
if (notification.isSuccessful()) {
//Push is successful. Do your thing...
}
else {
//Push is not successful. Do your thing...
}
}

Apple Push Notification Service on user response

Is there a way to track user response (the choice between the 'View' and 'Close') when the message has been push into the user device?
Thank you.
Your app is not notified if the user clicks "Close"; but if the user clicks "View", your app is launched, and you can detect that it was launched from a notification -- the notification's payload is passed to application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:.
Also, don't forget about the case where your app might already be running when the notification comes in. In that case, your application:didReceiveRemoteNotification: function will be called.
Full details are here.
My strategy would be:
Keep a record of the user's device token when your server fires a APNs notification.
Implement the didFinishLaunchingWithOptions and didReceiveRemoteNotification methods accordingly, so that whenever the user's device becomes active due to your APNs notification, it sends a request to let your server know. This request should contain the device token.
Your server does a look-up and match process, once such a request is received.

Handling Push Notification While App is Open

I have my Push Notification running. It works. I receive a notification and use
application:didReceiveRemoteNotification:
to get the incoming data and then send the user to the necessary screen.
Problem is, if you are using the App and a notification is received, it jumps to the destination screen without giving any alert/sound/anything.
I could put an alert in application:didReceiveRemoteNotification:, but then that alert would appear every time, not just when the app is running.
Ideas about how to handle this?
I would recommend checking the applicationState property in UIApplication to determine if the app is running in the background or not.

Is is possible for an application to handle the response from a push notification?

Is it possible to get the user's response from a push notification and create a notification reply? i.e. if a user clicks the view button and views the app, can we take that action and let the sender of the notification know that the receiver has viewed / opened the app?
Short answer, Yes.
When the application starts due to a user electing to from a notification (local or remote) the application is started in a special way so that the application can process the notification. At this point it can do whatever you want, like send a message back to your service.
See Handling Local and Remote Notifications for details.

Can push notification be sent without an alert for certain actions?

I know you can register to have alerts or not when you call the push notification API. However my problem is that I want a certain class of actions to have an alert notification while no alert notification for other class of action?
So for example, an alert should be shown when we send the notification "Heart rate dropping alert!". But no alert should be shown when we send the notification "downloading updated patient data", the app should just take the notification as an instruction to being download if it is launched. And simply ignore it if it is not launched.
How to implement this?
Check Silent Push Notifications for iOS 7.In the WWDC 2013's "What's New with Multitasking" presentation, there is a section about Silent Push Notifications.
You can embed custom JSON data in the push notification, look at The Notification Payload in the Apple docs.
Update: I don't think that quite answers your question. You can send a blank notification that has the effect of cancelling any previous push notification (including those from other applications). I'm not sure if the app gets notified of that when it is actually running. If it does you might be able to do that in conjunction with a custom JSON payload to achieve what you want?
{"aps": {"badge": 0}}
You probably know this already - you can't use a push notification to launch the app on the iPhone without the user seeing a popup (apps can never run in the background on the iPhone).
However, you can display a different popup message and include different JSON data in the notification. Then if the user presses the button to launch the app ("Start", or whatever you call the button on the right) that JSON data is passed into the app. Your app can then carry out a different action based on that data.
Not possible. Push notifications cannot initiate tasks - nothing can cause an app to execute without user action. Similar question to Can I use Push Notification for this. You can trigger a sound, a text alert, or a badge value. That's it.