What is the easiest way to implement a simple app which does two things:
receive push notifications (new messages in user's inbox),
open a page on my website in a webview or web browser.
It would be best if the solution was portable among iOS, Android and possibly other mobile systems like Windows Phone and BlackBerry 10, but I'm happy with separate solutions, if it's the only way to do it.
I suggest that, checking out Parse apis for this task.
There are solutions like http://xtify.com/ or http://urbanairship.com/products/push-notifications/ that provide an all in one package across platforms but I don't know the quality of service or which one would be right for you, some research on your part will be necessary if you choose this path.
Or you could implement it yourself but it will require your own server. The server would notify both Androids C2DM And Apple Push Service at the same time. You will have to implement the client side on each.
For iPhone here's a good tutorial for setting it up http://www.raywenderlich.com/3443/apple-push-notification-services-tutorial-part-12
For Android http://www.vogella.com/articles/AndroidCloudToDeviceMessaging/article.html
You register your app with both services then sends the push keys to your server. With the keys the server can then notify both platforms respective push services to send a notification .
I can't really help with the server setup stuff as its not my area of expertise but this is how we implement push notifications for the apps my company makes.
I'd recommend a Phonegap (Cordova) app and UrbanAirship for the notifications. You can get a free account with that. It's relatively easy to implement too.
As for the browser, I'm not sure exactly what you want it for. Could you elaborate and I'll post a response.
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Hi I need to develop a fully functional IM solution (like viber or whatsapp) for android. It will have the basic chat features plus many more. Can any one direct me on this. I don't want to re invent the wheel so my target is to use the existing thing as much as possible for the chat server etc (some thing like jabber). If one can direct me for this, or give me some good advice for this it will be a great help.
Edit -
I will extend the application future to allow other platform clients like Windows Mobile or iOS clients. In that sense what would be the best technology to implement the server? It must handle real time traffic well. Will I be able to wrap or extend some sort of a XAMPP server to get my work done?
This is what you need. http://developer.android.com/google/gcm/index.html
It has everything you need for developing applications like viber, gtalk, instant messaging sistems, global user notifications etc...and its pretty easy to implement.
A good solution if you don't want to reinvent the wheel is to create a Jabber / XMPP client on Android and all other platforms.
Server-side, you can use an OpenFire server for managing the roster and conversations with the Smack Library
Google Cloud Messaging as mentioned Janbo is the best way for sending push notifications to your mobile app.
What you could look into, is something like Firebase. They have an incredible api for such applications
firebase link to android docs
Plus it gives you a backend at the same time for free.
Basically what I'm trying to do is a system that each time there is a new user added to a SQL Server database, it sends a notification to the android and iOS app I'm developing. I was planning to use the Google Cloud Messaging, but the notifications need to get to the iOS application as well. What do you suggest me to implement? I was thinking of using GCM for the android app and APN for the iOs app, but is there a simplier unified way to implement a system like this?
I haven't used it myself yet, but I have this bookmarked for future exploration. It seems easy and does all of what you want. https://pushover.net/
But as far as my experience, GCM is great and pretty easy to implement on Android. No iOS development experience here.
you can use a trigger to send out an email everytime you have added a user
I am working on an home automation system my android application can turn lights on and off using bluetooth, i want to add another feature of controlling the devices from webpage.
Can anyone tell me what is the easiest way to do this, i know GCM(Google Cloud Messaging) is the best solution but is there any other better or easy way of doing it.
And if anyone has some working piece of code, please share it with me; I want to finish this project as soon as possible
If you have a backend built using PHP, Rails etc you can have API's that the app can call and check for instructions. However, this has the side effect of draining he battery due to continous polling.
If you don't wanna go the "polling the server periodically" way, you can use GCM as you mentioned.
You can send data using the JSON data format. This is easily the lighest and most versatile data format used by many web and android apps and has tremendous support from third party libraries as well.
Here are some tutorials for this:
http://developer.android.com/guide/google/gcm/demo.html
http://android.amolgupta.in/2012/07/google-cloud-messaging-gcm-tutorial.html
http://www.londatiga.net/featured-articles/how-to-send-message-to-google-cloud-messaging-gcm-server-using-json-and-php/
http://fundroiding.wordpress.com/2012/06/29/google-cloud-messaging-for-android-gcm-simple-tutorial/
http://androidjayavelu.blogspot.in/2012/07/google-cloud-messaging-gcm-tutorial_27.html
I am trying to write an app that will have a web interface for business owners who can select a specific Android mobile app user via querying a database and then have either the website or database(a little unsure about how this would work) push information to the queried user's phone to create a notification for them via the app.
I have never created an app like this and the connection between the website, the database, and the mobile app on a user's phone are all a mystery to me. I've searched the Android developer website and cannot find anything that will accurately explain how to do this, and have also Google'd the topic without much luck.
All I ask is for someone to point me in the right direction to place the pieces together, any information you can provide would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
Your solution will almost certainly involve Google Cloud Messaging.
Implementing GCM will involve a server in which all devices are registered with a central service. So you are half way there once you have GCM implemented. Well perhaps more so, almost everything you mentioned is basically just GCM.
http://developer.android.com/guide/google/gcm/index.html
For this you can use PHP programming to interact with the website.
Refer Android App interaction with Web
and also
Android App Development and Web Server Interactions
These links will be useful.Good luck..
I'm currently writing an Android application that should be able to receive push notifications from another application hosted in Google's App Engine.
Since I can't use sockets in GAE, I though maybe using XMPP over GTalk server would solve my problem. But that way the Android Application would be connected to the users Gtalk account and thus showing the user as being online, when in reality the user is not.
Any way of achieving this kind of communication without showing the user as being online, and without asking the user to create a separate account?
Or any free push notification alternatives?
EDIT:
I'm targeting 1.5+ Android devices so C2DM isn't an option.
Thanks!
May be you can use the channel API: Building real-time web apps with App Engine and the Feed API
Not sure about the exact requirement of your app, but.. perhaps C2DM can be an alternative?
http://code.google.com/android/c2dm
I've found the PubNub service (http://www.pubnub.com/).
It enables push notifications through API's on several platforms (PHP, Ruby, JavaScript, Java, ...).
It's a paid service, but provides a free daily quota.
Although it's not the ideal solution to my problem, it'll have to suffice until some Channel API documentation comes out.
Thanks to all of you!
Why are you shying away from HTTP/JSON? Might be useful to know why you discounted the obvious solution...