I have a Cordova app for Android and iOS which logs in a sqlite database when the user last opened the app. This data is also sent to a remote storage.
I want to alert the user that they haven't opened the app for x number of days and to do so.
For Android, that was pretty simple; I just scheduled a repeating AlarmManager, query the database and show a notification if the last open date was more than a day ago.
It doesn't appear to be so simple for iOS as, other than scheduled Local Notifications, there doesn't seem to be long running background tasks available, or anything similar to Broadcast Receiver.
Am I correct in thinking that for iOS, I will need to do the calculation of how long it has been since a user last opened the app within my remote datastore server, and then send the alert to the app via a push notification?
Or, is it possible to schedule a local notification and then have that do some calculations to decide whether to show itself?
The task is simple for both platforms by using local notification:
When the user starts or resumes the app, you do a datetime calculation and a predefinition when the notification should popup. That's it.
On next app start/resume, you remove the old notification and make a new setting for the next one.
I'm doing a similar task with this plugin: https://www.npmjs.com/package/de.appplant.cordova.plugin.local-notification
Related
I am developing an android app which is about meal subsciption.
I update the entire menu(breakfast, lunch , dinner) for each day in the morning( I am using firebase).
Now i want to send scheduled notification to users that is, i want to notify a user at 1pm that this is the coming menu for the lunch similarly i want to notify the user at around 8pm that this is the coming menu of dinner.
What should i use to get this scheduled notification?
I had an idea in mind that when i update the database in the morning. I will send a data payload with the required scheduling time using cloud messanging and schedule the notification on the device itself.
Will this work?
Yes, it will work, I recommend using Worker to schedule notification and take into account receiving notifications while the app is in the background, because your app should have that feature I guess.
I am using Firebase with OneSignal within an hybrid application (Android + JS with cordova app). In some cases the user may become offline and online while he is still using the application.
Note that you can't retrieve a push notification if you don't have connectivity.
So my question is, is it possible to retrieve a push notification if the another user sends a push notification while the first user is offline, and later on this first user retrieves the connectivity (As a delayed push notification)?
Thanks!
Internally, OneSignal uses Firebase Messaging Service, so the constraints should be looked for there.
Firebase has 2 types of pushes: notification messages and data messages. That matters if you want to show a notification straight when a push comes, or you'd like to do some additional processing beforehand.
Then, you can configure Firebase to store and resend every message up to 28 days. Of course, losing a network connection for some time does not prevent a message to arrive.
There is another limitation though: up to 100 messages can be stored per client. So, if there are more than a hundred, it's better to re-request the diff.
And then, when the device finally comes back to the network, you should decide if you'd like the notification to come immediately even if the app is already minimized or the device is sleeping. Here is a part about push priorities.
Finally, to be able to work with Firebase on this lower level, you may need to configure OneSignal accordingly. Here is an instruction telling how to work with the background notifications, if you need them.
I want to send the "We miss you" notification to the users who haven't user my app in more than 5 days. Can this be done with Firebase notifications?
I haven't noticed any options when creating a new notification that can see if the app wasn't used or anything similar, so I'm wondering is it possible to retrieve the timestamp of when the app was last accessed and schedule a notification (maybe locally?) using the said timestamp?
You can use implement ActivityLifecycleCallbacks.To know how to implement refer -Automatically log Android lifecycle events using ActivityLifecycleCallbacks?
Once you implement ActivityLifecycleCallbacks you will get callback whenever any of the activity is interacted by the user.
You can send this timestamp to the server everytime user interacts with your app.
The server can maintain 5 min timeout logice and send a push notification to the device.
On receiving the push notification your app can show notification to the user.
I've read a lot about notifications in iOS now and I'm quite confused about how to reliably schedule notifications, actually. Let me explain my scenario:
I created an Android app that holds a fixed list of dates. The user can not add or remove dates, he can only view that list (garbage removal dates for my area). You can, however, configure that you want to be notified the day before. I've made that app so that when the device starts, a notification timer is started that fires at a certain time, checks whether there are pending items for the next day and if so, shows a notification. Then it re-schedules itself for the next day. So normally, the user doesn't need to open the app at all to receive notifications. He only opens the app once to configure his street, which triggers the first scheduled event, or to actually see the list of upcoming dates.
I'm now trying to port this app to iOS and I understand from what I've read that there's no way to replicate the way I'm doing stuff on Android. I understand that I can create up to 64 notifications for certain points of time in advance, but without the user opening the app at all I can not be sure to reliably schedule all the notifications I may need.
Is there a reliable way to simulate the described Android behavior? Or is there a way to force the user to open up the app once every 30 days or so?
In a nutshell no.
If applicable you can make notifications repeating, but if the dates are random and you can't repeat the notification then you can't schedule more than the limit.
You can't schedule your app to run and you can't force the user to do anything. All you can do is post some sort of notification for 30 days or whenever with some message that you hope will compel them to open your app.
If you have a valid use case for it in your app, you can enable a background mode such as a location change on a cell tower transition for example, then when your app runs in the background re-schedule the notifications. Or remote push, or background fetch etc. But even with background modes you cannot guarantee your app will actually run in the background, you can just help to increase the chances that it might and the different background modes have different degrees of usefulness in this sort of area.
I have an app which is on Android and iOS. I have added a local notification to fire every 24 hours at a time specified by the user of the app. In Android, the local notification functionality is exactly what I need, but in iOS it seems to lack the functionality I need, unless maybe I am missing something...
Lets say the user sets the time the notification is to fire to 11:00am. In Android, at 11AM, it will wake up the app, go to the broadcase receiver and I am able to run code in a method that calls out to an API to fetch the latest data. Once it gets the data, it posts the notification to the user.
In iOS, it seems the data being posted to the user has to be pre-scheduled. So I have to create the notification message during scheduling of the notification. What I need is to be able to do something more like the above example.
So the problem is that at the time of when the notification is scheduled to fire, I need to check for fresh data, not the day before...
Any suggestions?
The same functionality doesn't exactly exist on iOS.
You can setup a local notifications using the functionality of a UILocalNotification object. With this you can set fireDate, etc. which is sort of like a push notification without a server. You can send a message, add a badge on the app icon, play a sound, etc.
Now the issue is that the app doesn't get launched by the OS. The app simply registers a notification in the OS, which is then handled at the fireDate time. This means you won't be able to have a chance to check for data and verify whether to continue with the notification, etc.
UILocalNotification Class Reference