I'm trying to follow the official guide for setting up a GCM client.
The Situation
After having set up everything just like in the guide,
I am able to send a message over to the GCM, using:
gcm.send
Then, exactly as should happen, the broadcaster calls to my intent's OnReceived procedure.
So far so good.
The Problem
Upon receiving the actual data, meaning - the intent's extras as a Bundle object, a problem occurs.
The extras' content (toString) contains an error:
Bundle[{error=TooManyMessages,
message_type=send_error,
google.message_id=1,
android.support.content.wakelockid=1}
The Meaning
Now, I've done my research, but came up with no practical answers. Only an explanation as to what is happening. Here is the problem, and its explanation:
This means that too many messages were stored in the GCM server for a single device without being delivered (which might happen if your device was offline while many messages were sent by your server).
Once the number of such messages reaches the limit, which is 100 if you don't use a collapse key, they are deleted from the GCM server, and you get that error message, which informes you your device should sync with your server in order to get the lost messages.
The Question
So, according to the answer, I am to sync my device with the server. How, exactly?
Also note, I have not created a GCM server. I'm only using the official GCM client implementation.
Thanks in advance to those who help!
-P
It's unclear what you are trying to send and to whom. The gcm.send method sends a message from your application to your server. For the message to big delivered, you must implement a server that connects to the GCM Cloud Connection Server. Since you don't have a server, GCM can't send the message to your server, and stores the message. Once too many messages are stored, you get the TooManyMessages error.
You must implement a server in order to use GCM. If you only want to send messages from the server to your app, you can use the simpler GCM HTTP API. If you need to send messages from your app to your server, you should use the GCM CCS API.
The answer you are referring to describes a different situation in which you can get TooManyMessages error (when the server sends many messages to the same device, but GCM can't deliver those messages), but it's not relevant to your situation.
Related
I've been doing so much research, but it seems like all the articles out there are either sending notifications from the console or sending a push notification to a single device.
All I want is to send a push notification using Firebase ON my client and not on the Console to everyone. Do I need a server? If so, what information do I need to retrieve from it?
If you simply want to send a downstream message, you don't really need a server. You can simply use Postman or cURL. Just specify the registration token(s)/topic you want to send your message payload to.
If you are aiming to send the downstream message from the client (Android app) itself, I would strongly advise not to. Quoting a portion of #FrankvanPuffelen's answer here:
Sending a message to devices (so-called downstream messages) requires a HTTP call that specifies the server key. As its name implies, this key should only be used in environments you can trust.
It is to avoid exposing the key to unauthorized users, preventing exploitation.
Im working on a ide where I as an admin can send notifications to all my clients(mobile). Ive been searching and found GCM and other services... I want to know if there is any simpler solutions.
I thought about making a rest call from all clients(mobile) to my server every 1 hour to check for new notifications. And if there is, get them and then present those notifications i the clients(mobile).
Polling will result to more battery life consumption and some other extra unnecessary process (as also mentioned in the comments by #MohammedAtif), for example, is when your client app makes the call to your server but ends up empty. The process is wasted since nothing really happened.
GCM doesn't do that. Gonna refer to the official docs on it's flow.
Lifecycle Flow
Send and receive downstream messages.
Send a message. The app server sends messages to the client app:
The app server sends a message to GCM connection servers.
The GCM connection server enqueues and stores the message if the device is offline.
When the device is online, the GCM connection server sends the message to the device.
On the device, the client app receives the message according to the platform-specific implementation. See your platform-specific documentation for details.
Receive a message. A client app receives a message from a GCM connection server.
Also announced in the recent I/O 2016, GCM's successor is now Firebase Cloud Messaging, which not only has the Push Notification Service, but also has other features (one example is Analytics) for free.
So overall, using GCM (or FCM) is a simpler method than polling. It handles the queuing of the messages you sent, and some others.
I'm totally new to hybrid world so I have to ask first.
Can I send notifications through GCM without a server?
I mean, I'm building a SPA with AngularJS and Firebase, but my customer asked me to make a dashboard for Android, so every time an user makes an order, they (both dashboard administrators) receive a PUSH notification on their phone: "A new order has been created", and when they "tap", the application opens.
I've been reading something about /topic/ endpoint to notify both of them, but I think I still need a server to do it. Do I?
It would be great if I simply post a http query using something like AngularJS' $http service to tell GCM to send a notification for that topic/usergroup.
Is that possible? If so, any idea about how?
Thank you very much in advance!
Sending a downstream GCM message can be done "without a server". One option is to send an HTTP request to GCM containing the required fields. Topic Messaging is available with GCM which does make it easier to send downstream messages without a server. Your client apps can subscribe for messages from /topic/usergroup and then you can send an HTTP request with /topic/usergroup as your "to" value, and subscribed clients will get it.
Note that you will need to set up a Google Developer Console project to get the required API key.
Check here for more information on the structure of GCM HTTP downstream messages.
Our organization has an Android app and an iOS app.
We want to start pushing notification to these apps.
Android has GCM.
Apple has APNS.
But we want to create an API which will work on both android and iOS.
What is the easiest way to setup a server so that when a push notification needs to be sent, it knows exactly which server to send the message to?
I use a service called Parse to do my notification pushes to both Android and iOS. They have great documentation and libraries available. You can get some details here: https://parse.com/products/push
As a little background this is for a university setting where multiple colleges apps as well as distance education may be using the service. Here is the approach that we are using in our organization. If you look at the way APNS works it can be used by just sending a web call to the APNS service with the token id. GCM is very close to the same type of system. Basically create a JSON package and send it to the desired service.
Here is our steps we used to create this service.
Server admins created a server and database that can be called that will collect the tokens from both android and ios devices. When the device registers we also send what type of device it is. This is possible since we are just sending data to the database that is has been created.
From here we then created a couple of python scripts that send the data do the desired service whether it is ios or android. These scripts gather the appropriate data from the database and sends the packaged data (JSON package) to APNS for ios message and GCM for google cloud.
We also created a web interface so that those who need to send messages to the devices can.
The rest of the implementation is up to you to decide the best way to utilize the service. For example when to check for invalid devices,
Because we are planning on using this same server for multiple applications we can send the type of device, token, application, or whatever else is needed for an application to distinguish it from others we produce so that each application that wants to use the service can. I hope this helps and gives you some idea on how to accomplish this.
For APNS, Maybe you may consider this forked version of PyAPNS that has enhanced message support.
https://github.com/jimhorng/PyAPNs
which means it will catch error response for failure messages and resent the message which are discarded by APNS while sending between failure messages and receiving error response.
Solution:
Non-blocking ssl socket connection to send notification without waiting for response.
A separate thread for constantly checking error-response from read connection.
A sent notification buffer used for re-sending notification that were sent after failed notification, or arbitrary connection close by apns.
(Reference to non-blocking apns pull request by minorblend, enhanced message by hagino3000)
Result:
Send notification at throughput of 1000/secs
In worse case of when 1st notification sent failed, error-response respond after 1 secs and 999 notification sent are discarded by APNS at the mean time, all discarded 999 notifications will be resent without loosing any of them. With the same logic, if notification resent failed, it will resent rest of resent notification after the failed one.
For GCM, you may consider https://github.com/geeknam/python-gcm
For generic wrapper that support both or more mobile provider:
https://github.com/Redth/PushSharp
I am developing mobile client for emailing service. One of the key features is notifications about new messages in the mailbox. As recommended by GCM architecture guidelines we are using a "Pusher" that is responsible for sending messages to the Google servers once we received a new message. The issue is that testing process has reported about serious problems with push notification delivery to devices.
So the question: is there an approaches for monitoring average statistics about push notification delivery percentage, time etc? Or maybe somebody have experience in how to set up test environment for efficient monitoring of how much notifications are getting lost during the application work?
All the "tips&tricks" related to the improving Android GCM experience are welcome.
Google claims that the processing at their GCM server takes less than a millisecond. Link below for a great video on GCM from Google's developer. And it's believable coz I could get push notifications almost instantaneously using my company's server to my device now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoaP6hcDctM
They don't guarantee delivery, but they try for a max of 4 weeks to deliver the message depending on the duration you set in the message you send to Google's GCM servers and if you wish to let Google keep the data for eventual delivery of message to the device in case the device was offline when the message was to be delivered.
However, there are certain conditions under which the GCM messages are not delivered.
Background data is unchecked under Account and Sync settings.
Prior to 4.0.4.(ICS), a Google account on the device is a pre-requisite for GCM. Maybe, Users are not logged into their Google account.
The only way to do so is to report back to your server with the timestamp of the received push.
You can either
Report back to the server once you receive the notification in your GCM service. To implement, you will have to add a push id for your push notifications and send the id along with the push data. The client will have to get the timestamp once it receive the message and send it back along with the notification id. A simple php script can be done (when you send a push notification, you set the time of the send-notification and once it receives the device's timestamp it sets the receive-notification. This boils down to two fields in your database (marked in bold). In this approach you will probably not so much care about errors since it is very probable that the device will have a connection when it receives the notification and as such its request to your server will go through.
Keep a list of notifications received in your app and their timestamps. And when the sync is done, send the this data in your sync operation. This is ultimately the same approach but your server's data won't be as realtime as the first approach. However, the extra request is not required from the client's side but saving the received notifications and their timestamps is.
All in all, you will have to keep track of the notifications sent using a notification-id and their sending time (send-notification) and their receive time (receive-notification). A simple query will help you analyze this data.
Google has added support so that you can receive delivery receipts from Cloud Connection Server (CCS):
You can use upstream messaging to get delivery receipts (sent from CCS to your 3rd party app server) when a device confirms that it received a message sent by CCS.
To enable this feature, the message your 3rd-party app server sends to CCS must include a field called "delivery_receipt_requested". When this field is set to true, CCS sends a delivery receipt when a device confirms that it received a particular message.
https://developer.android.com/google/gcm/ccs.html#receipts
Google does not make these statistics available to you. There are some statistics available on the android developer console. This only shows the number of messages and registrations.
You would have to implement your own data collection, which could be done fairly easily. You could record the time & id of each message sent and have your android client report back to your server with the time of message receipt. You could then store the data on your server and query as needed.
Since that time Google has provided developers with advanced monitoring tool.
The Gcm Diagnostic Tool is available in Google Play developer console. Additional information is here https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/2663268
So you can easily track the particular message status via registration token.