Mechanics of push notifications?

[jsmoke]

Trying to get my head around this. Firstly, storing static data on a server is straightforward, app connects to server, reads/writes stored settings on server.

Say you got a notification each time you were quoted on a forum for example, how does this work. So somebody quotes you, this quoted message gets send and stored server side as static data then the server sends? you a string(message) which your app receives the app creates a notification locally and pops up a notification on your phone. So all notifications are done locally I think by the app but the server still has to send the message first to tell what to be notified, so how does the server work out who(which client) to send this message too that you've just been quoted?

 

[ChroniC]

I don't know the answer. I have a feeling that each phone OS has a push notification service installed. When you create the app you have to sign up or integrate the individual service into your app.
Essential a notification is received like a text message routed to a particular app on a particular phone ID.

You can sign up to service that provide this, like amazon sns.

If you don't want instant notifications I would hazard a guess that you could use an auth token when the user signs into the app to look for data on the server with that tokens user ID.

 

[jsmoke]

I don't know the answer. I have a feeling that each phone OS has a push notification service installed. When you create the app you have to sign up or integrate the individual service into your app.
Essential a notification is received like a text message routed to a particular app on a particular phone ID.

You can sign up to service that provide this, like amazon sns.

If you don't want instant notifications I would hazard a guess that you could use an auth token when the user signs into the app to look for data on the server with that tokens user ID.

Yep seems Android has this built in service but not iOS. Also seems firebase is the popular web based service to use to manage your registrations.

So each device connects to the firebase server and is sent back a unique ID. From this moment individual or group messages can be sent to a device or devices.

So it's just your usual client/server architecture the tricky thing is managing all the IDs for a large amount of devices. Very similar to DHCP assigning you a unique IP.

 

[peterwalkley]

For mobile phones there's a few choices for the unique ID: IMSI, ICCID, MSISDN (i.e. phone number), handset device ID, customer ID (e.g. email). It depends on whether you want to key your service to the customer, the phone or the simcard within the phone.