I want to create a chat application for ios, android and windows phones as well as it should work with browsers in the future. My search led me to using Signal R with Azure Mobile Services(AMS).
My questions:
1) SignalR uses Websockets under the hood. Is websocket supported in Android, IOS, windows phones and all mobile/desktop browsers??
2) If not, how will it effect using SignalR with AMS?
3) Or should I just use Push notifications supported in AMS?
4) Any sample app/code snippet you can share. Note that I will be using Xamarin for my app development.
5) Any advice you can give for same.
Azure Mobile Services has SignalR integrated, and Azure Mobile Services provide a SDK for client apps, I suppose it is provide out-of-the box
See
Real-time with ASP.NET SignalR and Azure Mobile .NET Backend
Master the Managed Azure Mobile Services Backend–Part Four
High value mobile backend capabilities included
You will find many capabilities included in Mobile Services and readily available for your Web API. Mobile push notifications, real-time notifications with SignalR (auto-scaled out), social auth for your consumer apps, offline data sync for occasionally connected scenarios, to name a few.
Samples:
https://github.com/gshackles/RealTimeGallery
Sample to help developers to implement Push Notification, through Azure Notification Hubs, in mobile applications.
Note:
Azure Mobile Service is based in WebAPI!
For that you want, you should not use only Push Notification because Push Notification in iOS could not be read by the application if the user ignore it, only in android or windows you can get and save it. Another thing that can be a problem is the fact if the app is running you should not show the push notification and you should show a pop up with the notification... and the push notification can have a delay from the Push Notification Service (Apple, GCM, WNS...). Push notification are a notification that something happened in the app when the user is not using it.
In my opinion you should use AMS+SignalR for realtime communication and then Push Notification for update the user then he not using the app.
Using SignalR is efficient to save yourself from hitting any push notification cap if you ant to limit your costs. But you'll need to either turn notifications on/off at the right time when the app becomes active or inactive, otherwise the app may go in the background and push notifications won't be sent.
You can use a pure push approach where notifications are shown when the app is inactive/in the background, and whenthe app is active, you simply intercept the notification in the app, consume it and cancel it so it doesn't get shown. I have written a blog post on this approach along with 3 samples in Github for iOS, Android and Windows Universal at http://www.ageofmobility.com/2014/10/06/azurechatr-building-a-cross-platform-chat-app-for-windows-ios-android/.
Related
I have a Xamarin.Forms app. In it, I implemented video chat functionality (that supports iOS and Android) using IceLink. The video chat works when both the caller and the recipient have their apps open. Now I wonder how I can make a call to a device which has the app not open.
For Android
You can send notification by Firebase Cloud Messaging when device do not open, click the notification to open your application, show the video chat page.
If you use a high priority FCM for an app, it will allow that app to run services in the background for a short period of time. This would be a good alternative to having a background service that polls an app in the background:https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/android/app-fundamentals/services/#background-execution-limits-in-android-80
For iOS
You can refer to Jack's reply.
https://stackoverflow.com/a/60001529/10627299
Good afternoon,
I apologize in advance, as I know this is subjective. But, I'd very much love the opinion of a Xamarin expert.
I'm building a mobile application for a client using Xamarin targeting Android and iOS devices. We have a .NET Web API back-end application that is consumed by a MVC web application (hosted in Azure), and now our Xamarin application. Our API needs to send basic push notifications (to iOS and Android) when certain things happen.
I've configured push notifications (also targeting Xamarin projects) in the past, but it has been a few years. That configuration included Azure Notification Hubs and GCM (the GCM piece was recently updated to Firebase - still in combination with Azure Notification Hubs). All of that is working just fine.
After reviewing push notifications again, it seems as though Firebase has become something of a Notification Hub itself, handling both iOS and Android applications. There is plenty of documentation on setting up push notifications in a variety of ways, using just Firebase for both iOS and Android, using Firebase with Azure, using just Azure for iOS, etc.
So, my question is.. If you are a seasoned Xamarin developer creating a new iOS and Android targeted application with a .NET backend, would you use Azure Notification Hubs? Based on my reading, it seems as though the simplest approach would be to utilize Firebase for both iOS and Android, leave out the Azure Notification Hub piece of it, and use our back-end to make a single POST request to the Google API (i.e. https://fcm.googleapis.com/v1/projects/myproject-b5ae1/messages:send based on their documentation at https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/send-message) to send a new push notification.
However, that doesn't sit very well with me considering that Microsoft is behind both Xamarin and Azure. My gut is telling me that I should be using Azure Notification Hubs. Could someone please provide some guidance? I feel like I'm not understanding something that's preventing me from being able to come to a good conclusion on my own.
Thanks,
Chandler
This seems to be a problem with the software architecture. Technically, notifications can be done for both Azure and IOS/Android notifications. But from user data statistics and future data service analysis, you need to consider whether the notification service you used before can continue to provide services for you. At the same time, if you are ready to abandon the previous use, you can slowly split some users to use the new notification service. From my personal point of view, this is the safest.
Is it possible to send an individual push notification to a specific user of webview Android application?
I have a webview based Android application. Android 8 blocks all background processes and my application can not anymore check for messages every 5 minutes and to show push notifications is there are new messages. As I understand almost the only solution is to use firebase to show notifications.
My question is: can I send individual Firebase notifications to webview application users? If yes, how? People who login to my website from Android phones, enter their data in a login form that loads my website. It's not a Android login form. How can I at the same time login to Firebase and how Firebase will know that this user is already logged in if it's only a webwiew application?
A webview is not capable of directly receiving Cloud Message payloads. The only browsers that works with Cloud Messaging are those that support the Push API.
What you can do instead is receive the payload in the native layer of your Android app (using a normal Android integration with a service that receives the payload), then proxy it to your webview as needed, using webview's ability to inject javascript into it (while it's visible). This definitely is not a trivial amount of work.
I'm planning to add push notifications to my web app.
As far as I understand it, to push notifications to my users, I can either use a web push library and deliver the notifications directly, or use a push notification service such as OneSignal, Firebase Cloud Messaging, or Batch.com.
From what I understand, these services offer a one-stop solution to deliver notifications not only as Web Push, but also to iOS and Android apps.
If I'm focusing only on Web Push for now, is there any advantage I should be aware of, to use one of these services over a web push library directly?
Web Push is a standard which is still under development and subject to change. Also browser support is quite limited at the moment (see https://caniuse.com/#feat=push-api).
The advantage is: you have one API to rule all the supporting platforms (including desktop).
Disadvantage is: You have to be aware that not all platforms support the standard.
Using a notification SaaS solution to handle notifications enables you to handle all platforms. Sending out a notification from your backend will be a single call to your notification SaaS service, but you still have to be aware, when you want to have native notifications on Android, iOS and the browser, you will have to handle the integration of those platforms differently in your client apps (see example here using Google Cloud Message integration in an Android App: https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/android/client).
So your decision should be based on which platforms you have to support.
- If you get away with supporting Chrome, Firefox and Edge browsers on non-iOS-Devices (or handle iOS Notifications differently), you can use Web Push.
- Otherwise i would choose a Notification SaaS Solution.
The most important point for me personally when doing your own implementation is that you control everything. This means that your notifications don't fail when AWS loses a region or pricing changes and you can't afford it any more. Not any provider can ban you because of the content you distribute or the complaints from users. You can implement your own logic for showing the notifications on the front-end, like stacking them or having your own segmentation rules (paying users versus free tier, for instance). I'm not even speaking of the custom subscription UI. No weird copyright in your messages.
From what I understand, these services offer a one-stop solution to deliver notifications not only as Web Push, but also to iOS and Android apps.
When you've got the server logic to process the app events and send notifications in place, it shouldn't be really hard to extent it do work with mobile push notifications. The only thing that changes is the way you subscribe devices.
And the last, but not the least - it's fun to develop. This is more of a personal matter, I guess, but I like learning new thing :)
Hope that helps you to make a decision.
you can implement push notification to your website without using third-party libraries. You have required to get subscription token from the client and store this subscription token onto the server (Inside database). After when you want to send a push notification to the user then you have to just call endpoint (endpoint is mentioned in subscription token). That's it.
Due to security risk and managing subscription tokens, developers prefer to use firebase, AWS push notification or onesignal.com services. These services are optional you don't need at all.
Read links introduction to push notification and also the same lab code examples. Later I will update with simple working code for further reference to your question.
It depends on what you want. It‘s not possible to use iOS Safari for Web-Push. For notifications to iOS you have to use a service or build your own app.
I use Pushover for notifying myself from Scripts and Software. That may or may not be a solution depending on how much users you have, how many notifications you send and how willing your users are to use a web app like Pushover (or an app on iOS).
A service will keep notifications going when things change. So it should be less maintenance for you.
If you want to target iOS visitors also, this is not possible, as web push notifications are not supported by iOS.
To circumvent this, you need to use a third party service like Wise Notifications.
The alternative is to build an iOS app and send native push notifications.
I am building mobile apps for iOS and Android using PhoneGap Build. I would like to send push notifications to both types of device using the same server-side process. Is this possible?
Apple's certification process to enable push notifications is painful, much more so than anything available for Android. Do I have to use it?
GCM (Google Cloud Messaging) says it supports both operating systems, but the more I read about it - with respect to Phonegap - the less I see iOS mentioned! And sadly the GCM/Phonegap plugin doesn't support subscribing to a topic, which is a way of sending one message out to all devices in one go via a 'global' topic.
UrbanAirship and PushWhoosh seem to integrate with Phonegap, but I am forced to use their website to create my messages. GCM looks more attractive in this respect, because I can get our own ASP.NET server to talk to GCM via HTTP and thus control messages from our databases.
Main question: Are there any options for a single server-side option which can send push notifications to both iOS and Android via a single Phonegap plugin? (Ideally I would control messages from my own server, where one message can go to all Android/iOS devices in one go, and avoid as many Apple certificates as possible.~)