I have an app that currently uses C2DM for push notifications. I would like to inquire if I update the app to GCM and if some users do not upgrade their app, will Google allow me to use both the C2DM and GCM for the two versions of my app?
Or will the users on my previous app never receive a PUSH notification altough I still have the push logic implemented for C2DM?
I've completely replaced C2DM with GCM in the app, and left support for both protocols in the server side. Works like a charm; details are here.
They will still receive them as long as you don't remove any authorisation keys, ids etc. as GCM uses the Project ID while C2DM uses the registered e-mail address.
More on it here: C2DM to GCM Migration
Once the C2DM service was deprecated recently I advice you to migrate your pushes system to GCM service.
The best way to deal with it is doing the thing like Google says. Take a look at this topic in the official GCM's documentation.
While not the original question, an interesting one would be: Can one app simultaneously use C2DM and GCM.
C2DM uses the Sender-Account while GCM uses the Project-ID to register. The only thing they both might share is the App-package name (and obviously the google account of the device, but that shouldn't matter as there are multiple apps which can use gcm/c2dm in parallel anyway).
In my experience registering C2DM and GCM in the same app can cause some serious problems.
Reason to have both in one app might be that you want to use GCM in the app, but can't everywhere because a legacy backend might not be able to switch to GCM yet. Probably a rather rare scenario - but currently happening for our app.
Related
I have an android project in which GCM is implemented. Back-end (server) is already coded suitably with GCM.
Now is it possible to add firebase (FCM) in my project and work in parallel with GCM? I cant migrate to FCM because it is impossible to change my back-end code as it is a big project and too much code is there. Has anyone done something like this?
Please help. Thanks in advance.
Though my particular case might be a bit specific, because the project I am involved in has a very specific backend, it seems to me FCM interoperates well with GCM, i.e you can have both in your app, GCM and FCM broadcast receivers / receiver services, and they will both work as well with no conflicts.
This has a huge advantage because you don't have to decide with migration at once, you can do this more gradually.
Well done, Google!
No, you can not use both FCM and GCM at same time. GCM is the old version and that it is strongly recommended to use FCM.
Why is Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) part of Firebase? How does it relate to Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM)?
Google is investing in Firebase, making it our unified mobile
platform.
Over the last few years, we have expanded GCM to send messages to
multiple platforms beyond Android: iOS and Chrome. Firebase is known
for being cross platform, so FCM now makes a natural fit in the
Firebase suite of features designed for Android, iOS, and mobile web.
Another core value of Firebase is cross-feature integration. We are
adding the ability for other Firebase features to easily send messages
via FCM. For example, you can use Firebase Notifications to send
reengagement messages to your users.
We think that GCM will be even more useful to developers as an
integrated part of Firebase. You can still get the same great product,
now under a new name: "Firebase Cloud Messaging," or FCM for short.
Is GCM going to be deprecated?
We will continue to support the current version of GCM Android and iOS
SDKs because we know a lot of developers are using GCM SDKs today to
handle notifications, and client app upgrade takes time.
But all new client-side features will be added to FCM SDKs only moving
forward. You are strongly encouraged to upgrade to FCM SDKs.
You can get more details here
As per FAQ you don't need additional server configuration when you're migrating your client app from GCM to FCM, so just use FCM in your android app.
Here's the docs on how to migrate your app
I find the problem to use both GCM and FCM together. You will get to different deviceToken and one of these token get NotRegistered error.
For my FCM token always get NotRegistered error but the app is active and not uninstalled and my GCM token is valid and gets a push notification.
I am an android developer ....have made a few apps...but for the first time had a chance to implement push notifications for one of my apps... After looking for a number of solutions including Amazon SNS, Pushbots, Pushy, Parse etc.I was wondering on why there are a lot of popular third party services...
If they implement the same GCM. GCM also provides a dashboard with tracking and topic based notifications.
Is there any disadvantage if I am using GCM directly. Also a big question... most of the push services only offer sending notification to apps... what if I need to trigger notification from my android app. Does GCM supports this. What are the best solutions for implementing this.
I am building an Android app with a server at back end. What I want to do is, whenever anything new is updated in server the app should trigger a notification into the users phone showing the newly added content.
EDITED TO ADD: This is even more important as of Android M and beyond. As part of a comprehensive effort to improve battery life, the OS actively restricts many of the techniques that apps have used in the past for sync and notifications. Use built-in methods like JobScheduler and GCM in order to avoid issues.
The core notification mechanism in Android is Google Cloud Messaging (GCM), documented here. It's built in to the platform at a low level and directly supported by mobile networks, so it's usually the most efficient choice. It doesn't have a guaranteed latency, so it may not be appropriate for very time-sensitive messages, but it's generally quite fast--at least as fast as sending SMS, for instance.
There are a number of different commercial products as well as FOSS libraries that wrap GCM in various ways, for instance to provide support for very old (pre-Froyo) devices or devices without Google enabled, or to provide a single cross-platform solution between various competing mobile platforms. Firebase, Parse, and Urban Airship are some that I'm aware of.
To use GCM, you need to get an API key from Google. You use this API key to authenticate requests to the GCM server. Once you have a key, sending a notification is as easy as sending a POST request to the GCM server. GCM also supports XMPP, but I haven't used it.
On the client side, your app needs to call the GCM API to register for messages. You provide the project name that you used to create the API key, so that GCM knows which server messages should go to your client app. Once your app has registered, incoming messages will be sent to it as intents, which you can receive by implementing a BroadcastReceiver.
There's a tutorial on the Android developer site that walks you through the GCM process.
Just now Google introduced Google Cloud Messaging for Android. But here problem is that end user must have atleast one google account to use this service. is possible to skip GCM and send push notification end user or suggest any other way?
Important: C2DM has been officially deprecated as of June 26, 2012. At that time C2DM stopped accepting new users and quota requests. C2DM has been replaced by Google Cloud Messaging for Android (GCM). The C2DM service will continue to be maintained in the short term, but developers must use GCM for new development. We also encourage developers to move existing C2DM applications to GCM to take advantage of GCM features. See the C2DM-to-GCM Migration document for more information.
Well this is part of C2DM prerequisite Can't skip this mate.. thanks
To use GCM user have to be registered in goggle service. If you distribute you application only by Google Play this is not a problem.
There are alternatives but they have lots of disadvantages: sending SMS (you have to pay for it); implement own Push Notifications (by polling your server) - it is easy to make some mistake and drain phones battery and requires lots of work.
I have one single Gmail account signed up for C2DM.
What I would like is that my app, thanks to this account (after having requested registration IDs and auth tokens for each device), could be able to provide messages to all the devices in which the app is installed.
I want to know if is it possible to use the C2DM in this way..
Thanks a lot
(for any details, just ask me.. )
ps I made the c2dm work on the emulator, but of course I cannot try what written before because I would need several phones..
Going off your question and comments, it sounds like you're just wondering if you can send c2dm notifications to an indeterminate number of devices using only one sender id.
That is exactly the way c2dm is supposed to work. You create one sender id to use on your backend servers, and that sender id is used in your app to register for c2dm notifications. Your backend then gathers all registrations ids and uses your one sender id to push notifications interested parties.
If I understood your issue correctly, the answer is: you can't.
You will have to send one http request, to google servers, for each device you want to reach.
There's no way to broadcast a message to all the users who have registered to your service.
It' frustrating because in my case I send a newsletter for all my users, so opening a connection to millions of users is expensive.
To solve the scalability issue I have created a simple appengine map-reduce task that loops through all the user registrations and create the http connection to the google services, it's the fastest you can go because it dynamically instantiate new servers for your delivery needs.
C2DM has been deprecated. GCM has replaced it, and it allows you to send messages to 1000 devices with one HTTP POST.
C2DM->GCM Migration Guide:
http://developer.android.com/guide/google/gcm/c2dm.html