In Android, I want to run a service which periodically connects to the server gets the message
and displays the message in full screen to the user irrespective of what the user is doing.
Should I be using the above approach or use GCM to deliver messages to the client device.
What component do I need to use to show a full screen message to the user ?
Notification requires the user to pull down the notification bar and select the notification. I want the message to appear right away in full screen on the user device.
Please let me know what component of android I should use to achieve the above step.
Thanks
A GCM message should do. The additional information needed to show the message can be represented via JSON and parsed by your GCMIntentService. As long as the payload is within 4k the messages will be delivered. The maximum retention time (at the moment) for a GCM message is 4 weeks. You might want to take that into consideration also.
As for displaying the message on the screen, it is possible to register broadcast receivers for an Activity. Alert the broadcast receiver and display the message if the activity is on the foreground.
GCM is used for push notifications. For what you want to do, GCM is not needed at all if you simply want a service running executing some code at your set interval and polling your server. If you want to show a full screen message, simply create an activity and display that each time you execute the code in your interval. Now if you want that message to automatically disappear after a few seconds, then create a custom Toast message.
GCM will simply add another complexity layer that you don't need I think.
Related
I am building a chat app using firebase . I want to show notification for new messages when the app is in background/foreground/terminated . I tried to show it using background service but it gets killed everytime app is destroyed. I know it can be done using FCM but i don't want to use it . It can also be done using foreground service but i don't want that strict notification .
I explored various blogs and i came to know this happens because it runs in same process and to create another process it get complex from Oreo and higher versions.
I also come to know JobService but it minimum periodic time is 15 minutes and if implemented will lose the real time notification nature.
How it can be implemented as in WhatsApp ?
If you see the setting of WhatsApp you will see that 1 Process and 1 Service message keeps showing indicating that MessageService is still running which means that it can be done using background service
I come to know that WhatsApp is also using FCM kind of thing with high priority to show notification.
It simply syncs the changes in database when data message is recieved using FCM.
This data message can be send using either firebase GUI or trusted environment like admin-sdk ..
I used the later one to send data message using admin-sdk from my server.
I have used APIs with device token of user as data message to send a POST request to my server which sends notification as data message to receiver device to trigger syncing .
Once Syncing is finished , i have send notification accordingly.
I want to show notification only app is close or background or in different chatroom. but I don't know which is better Solution.
stop send push notification when another device foreground
just send push notification anyway and don't show the notification in another device when app foreground.
In first solution I need to get another device information from server like in which chatroom or in which activity or in foreground it make my app and database more complex but maybe it reduce the network usage.
In second solution just send notification anyway and receiver device just ignore it but maybe big network usage.
Most apps that I know off use the second approach: they always send the FCM message, and only show it when needed. That also means that they usually only send a so-called tickle message, which contains very little data and whose main purpose it is to wake the app up.
I'm building a newspaper-like app and I would like to know how many people received the article's push notification vs how many actually read it.
I was thinking to implement a way in which when the notification is received the app wakes up and send a request to the server saying "Hi I'm _____, I've received the notification of the article ____" and store it in the database. Then afterwards if the user click on the notification and goes to read the article I send another request saying "Hi I'm ____ and I've read the article _____" and I also store it on the database. Afterwards with some queries I'm able to understand the percentage read/received.
I don't understand if it's even possible to wake up the app even if it was not opened by the user in a while and send a request to the server (for background is meant that the application is not launched or that is in the cache ?).
I would like to achieve what they did with Whatsapp:
I receive a new message on Whatsapp
I don't open the app
I go to WhatsApp Web
I open the conversation on WhatsApp Web
The badge and the notification on the phone goes away because I read it somewhere else
I think that that feature is achieved with silent push notifications that just update the app badge and clear the read notification.
Thats a very nice question on how to implement such silent notifications. There are few variables here that we need to consider and deal them in a different way.
Push notifications sent to the users - Some of them would have received it, Some may not have received it at all.
Pushing multiple notifications to the same user in a small amount of time - It becomes difficult here to track the exact notification user opened the app. Because user might have read all the news that received notifications in a single attempt.
The actual content displayed to the user in the app - User might have opened the app because of notifications. Some times he might have seen the notifications and then opened the app directly without interacting with the notifications.
So this is how the implementation can be.
Implement push notifications for the app
User receives the push notifications and the notification badge shows Number (1).
Now when the user views the same news story in any other medium (Your own Mac App or PC app). Server is notified of the users action and the news he/she/whoever just read.
Now the server knows it has sent a notification and it is not read. When you receive the read notification, you can send a remote notification that can be handled by the app in background and update the badge.
Check out this link for more details on how to handle notifications in various modes.
Apple documentation also can be referred here for background mode - remote-notification.
So you will be making your app run in background with certain settings to respond to silent notifications and update the badge just like WhatsApp. I hope this helps.
I've already implemented such thing in one of my app, and it's actually tricky.
You'll have a lot of use cases to handle.
First thing (but you seem to already know it): Apple does not provide
any callback to say : "this notification was sent"
Second thing : when your app is killed (not even in background), nothing at all can be done with your notification, meaning your app won't be able to wake up and read the notification, and therefor do something. The only thing you can do is changing the badge number, even if your app is killed.
Third thing : when your app is in background, you can wake up your app during 30sec. During that time you can send a request to the server, but if it takes too long, the process will be killed by the OS.
Saying that, here is a quick explanation of how you could implement the system:
You'll need on the server side to save in your data base any notifications that were sent. As soon as they are sent, save them as "pending"
On the app side: if your app is in background, as soon as the notification is received, you can wake up your app to send a request to the server. Then in your data base, your notification status will change to "receive" or "notified". If your app was killed, when the user launch your app, send a request to the server to ask for all notification in "pending" state, that way your app will be up to date, as well as your badge number.
If the user click on the notification, this will open your app directly on the article, that way you'll be able to send a request and say to your server that the article was received and read.
If the user read your article on the web side, send a notification. Set the notification badge number with the number of actual "pending" notification in your data base.
Hope this will help you in addition of the answer of #Prav :)
try this Notification Listner service https://github.com/kpbird/NotificationListenerService-Example.
Reply from Apple Developer Technical Support:
Hello Matteo,
Thank you for contacting Apple Developer Technical Support (DTS). Our engineers have reviewed your request and have concluded that there is no supported way to achieve the desired functionality given the currently shipping system configurations.
So at the end of the games IT'S NOT POSSIBLE
You want to sync your app with web app or website than once you send notification to application than set notification to particular ID.If user read that message from your web then send push notification again with different message and handle in service or broadcast receiver after that cancel notification if received message contains different message.you can also use Notification Listener.Refer thislink
Refer this link for ios.
Hi #Smile Applications after reading your question I would suggest you see OneSignal website. OneSignal will allow you to send notifications to your subscribed users. It will also show you how many users are using your app and how many of them have received your notifications. If you want to send notifications and track them from the app itself you can use their API. It is easy and I have implemented this in Android and soon will be implementing in IOS.
Now the second part of your question about knowing how to track how many users have read/opened your notification and on which activity they are on you can use Google Analytics. It will allow you to see from which part of the world your users are using your app and which activities of your app are being opened most. It is also easy and I have implemented this also in Android and soon will be implementing in IOS too.
I want that my app will send data (Equation) to another android device and when the other device will get that data he will make calculation with that data (equation).
any idea's how to send data ??
Thanks.
P.s: its similar to this preview question: Send an equation to another android user for solving auto
You can use GCM. it's the Android push notification.
The notifications will arrive to the device regardless if the app is in the background or forground.
About the user noticing it, it's up you. The push notification itself is not showing anything to the user. It enters a callback (OnReceive) and you as the developer decides what to do with it. you can show an alert at the status bar, Send a broadcast to a service, update the DB or in your case do something with an equation etc...
Are you considering Bluetooth as an option?
If so, this lib may help you https://github.com/buddles/AndBT
(The following question is for mobile platforms in general (iPhone, Android, Blackberry))
We are integrating chat functionality into our existing application. I designed the system with a .Net web service and Sql Database to keep track of chat messages. Everything's working fine so far, when the chat window is open.
I need a way to notify the user of a new message when he/she is not currently viewing the chat screen (meaning either the app is not in the foreground or they are in another section of the app (not the chat screen).
Obviously, push notifications would be perfect here, but I'm not sure when I should be sending pushes.
How would the client sending the message know whether or not the other guy is viewing the chat screen? Should I just be sending pushed with every single message and have the receiving device decide whether or not it needs to pop up a window or display something in a nofication bar?
It seems like overkill to be pushing every single time a message is sent. How is this normally done?
Any ideas at all would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
First and foremost, keep in mind that your server will act as the broker for all messages passed between different chat clients. Here's how this could work:
User A initiates a message for user B
Message gets sent to the server.
Server determines that this message is for user B.
Server initiates a push notification and delivers the message to user B.
Now why would you need to push every single chat message? Because the only other way for your users to get notified would be to poll your server for new messages. Constant polling (at whatever rate you determine) is extremely bad in the mobile realm due to limited resources (battery, networking, etc.)
In a push notification scenario, it is up to your application to handle the logic of whether the user is notified on receiving a new message. What this means is that when user B receives a new message from user A, it's up to you to decide if you wish to notify B (i.e. bring your app to the foreground) or not. In either scenario, you want to use push notifications instead of polling.
On a similar note, user B does not necessarily have to know that user A's application (your app) is in the background which is why you will need to handle that logic (within your app) appropriately.
Push notification normally is applied to the application if it is not in the foreground. It is a way to wake-up the application to handle a new transaction from the server. Basically, a push notification is to be done if the client is running in the background and a new message is ready to be fetched from the server. As long as the new message is not fetched, if other messages arrive on the server, a push notification should be sent to the application.
Push notification is not necessary if the application is still running even if the user is viewing other screens of the application. It is however important that a thread is handling the connection to the server which is "patiently" waiting for transactions from the server.
One question, what protocol are you using for the messaging?.. Is it OMA IMPS protocol?