custom notification sound on GCM air extension - push-notification

Question

I'm building a GCM extension which an AS3 developer can set the location of an mp3 file on sdcard and when the GCM notification runs, that custom sound plays. all good, all fine.
but when I close my air app and send a notification from server, android default sound will be played. and that happens because when the air app is closed, its context is null and the extension does not have access to the parameters set by the app, so it plays the default sound.
I know I can create resources inside the .ane and use them as a custom sound but I don't want to do that. I want to leave the AS3 developer with the freedom to chose the location of the sound file himself.
any ideas?
Thanks,
Hadi

Answer 1

it's a shameless self promotion but I think it's good to tell people who are looking for this to checkout the finished extension here: http://myappsnippet.com/gcm/
the air extension supports custom custom sounds and icons!

Answer 2

You're probably going to have to add some settings to the application that get stored somewhere within the native Android scope and access them from within your GCM notification receiver.
Have a look at SharedPreferences
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/SharedPreferences.html
For example:
//
// Save a shared preference
SharedPreferences sharedPreferences = context.getActivity().getSharedPreferences( "YOUR_PREFERENCES_NAME", Activity.MODE_PRIVATE );
Editor preferencesEditor = sharedPreferences.edit();
preferencesEditor.putString( "customNotificationSound", soundLocation );
preferencesEditor.commit();
Then in your receiver:
SharedPreferences sharedPreferences = context.getActivity().getSharedPreferences( "YOUR_PREFERENCES_NAME", Activity.MODE_PRIVATE );
String soundLocation = sharedPreferences.getBoolean( "customNotificationSound", false );