iOS Push Notifications - Zero To Engagement

IOS PUSH NOTIFICATIONS
ZERO TO ENGAGEMENT
Created by Adam Duke



@adamvduke
@adamvduke
http://adamvduke.com

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ABOUT ME
Adam Duke
Engineer/Co-Founder at Symmetric Infinity
http://symmetricinfinity.com
Working with iOS for about 4 years
Working with Ruby/Rails for about 3 years
I ❤ open source

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AGENDA
What is a push notification?
How do they work?
Communicating with APNS
Prerequisites for communicating
Code Walkthrough
Pitfalls
Feedback
Upcoming Changes/Features
Third-party Providers

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WHAT IS A PUSH NOTIFICATION?
Most of the time they look something like...

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HOW DO THEY WORK?
1. Apple maintains a persistent connection to each device
2. Something happens that you want to tell a user about
3. Package up some data in Apple's proprietary protocol
4. Send the data to Apple
5. Apple forwards the information to your user's device

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TL;DR

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PROPRIETARY PROTOCOL?
Uses a plain TCP socket secured by SSL
A single notification looks like...
Ewww
Ain't nobody got time for that
Most platforms have a library for this

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PREREQUISITES TO SEND A NOTIFICATION
1. Certificates to secure your socket
These are tied to a specific bundle id
e.g. com.apple.itunes.iphone
Configure/Download from developer.apple.com
2. A device token
Who do you want to send a notification to?
We'll talk about how to get this in a minute.
3. A JSON hash of the data you'd like to send
The "alert" key will be the text shown
The "badge" key will set the badge on the icon
The "sound" key identifies the sound to play
https://zeropush.com/documentation/generating_certificates

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WHAT DO THEY LOOK LIKE?
CERTIFICATES
This is just a public/private key pair

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DEVICE TOKEN
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NOTIFICATION PAYLOAD
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HOW DO I GET A DEVICE TOKEN?
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HOW DO I GET A DEVICE TOKEN?
Remember this is Objective-C, so...
Write a little more code!
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DEMO
The code is available on github
https://github.com/adamvduke/ZeroToEngagement

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PITFALLS
Apple expects you to maintain a persistent connection to the
APN service
Rapid connect/disconnect behavior may be seen as a DOS
attack and get you black listed
The communication over the connection is asynchronous
If there is a problem with a notification Apple will reply, and
close the connection
Any notifications sent between the error and the reply must
be sent again
Connections that are idle for too long are closed with no warning

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FEEDBACK SERVICE
1. User deletes your app
2. You attempt to notify them
3. Apple realizes the app is no longer on their device
4. Apple marks that device as inactive
5. Query the feedback service
6. You mark the device inactive
7. Don't send notifications to inactive devices
8. If the device registers for notifications again, mark the device as
active
9. Resume sending notifications

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UPCOMING CHANGES/FEATURES
Silent Notifications
Notifications for Websites

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THIRD-PARTY PROVIDERS
1. - A developer focused push notification provider
Full disclosure, my business partner and I wrote this
We're looking for beta testers!!
2. - A marketing focused push notification
provider
3. - Cloud database and push notification provider
Owned by Facebook, possibly subject to NSA Prism data
collection
4.
ZeroPush.com
UrbanAirship.com
Parse.com
Push.IO

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QUESTIONS?

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iOS Push Notifications - Zero To Engagement

iOS Push Notifications - Zero To Engagement

Adam Duke

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