sending automatic push notifications in app from web service - php

i have made an android app for buying and selling of goods. Now i want to send notifications to all the users everyday regarding how many new items have been added. I have used php language for scripting.
I went through various sites but am confused.. Is using google cloud messaging service (GCM) necessary? will it send automatic notifications everyday?
I am confused. please help. thanks

I would say yes to the GCM in your case if you can have your own third party server running somewhere. The server can use GCM to talk to all devices running your app. The advantage here is that non of the app installations on many devices need to be connected to your server for this to happen. No background Service/IntentService running draining battery.
Read all about GCM and Study the client/server demo and you're up and running in a few days.

Related

Do I need to make 2 different applications for using GCM in android?

I tried searching these issues. Some sites say I need to do some stuff with php in order to make 3rd party server while others don't mention anything. some says it need JSON. Guide me please. PS I am a beginner and know java, XML,SQL only.
You should only need one server. The second server you are reading about may be the Google GCM cloud server? When I did a GCM project a few years ago, I had one server, it happened to be a App Engine instance. It generated events and sent them to Google via the GCM api and then onto onto the device. I don't remember it being that difficult.
I did have more than one server in the mix though, there were others that sent messages to the AppEngine server, but it was not required to send a GCM message.
Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) is a service that enables developers to send data from servers to both Android applications or Chrome apps and extensions.
So if you want to send data to the users of your App then you must have an interface or dashboard from where you can send some data (typically push notification) to the users of your app.
This dashboard (server from which you can send data) can be developed by using PHP or any script languages.
Now a though can come up in your mind:
"I am suppose to develop both the mobile app and the server then what
role does GCM play?"
Yes, GCM is playing a vital role indeed. The server we have to develop is just to design an interface so that you can type your message/notification and select the recipients. Rest of the part of (managing the queue, communication with the apps checking for authentication and all other stuffs will be done by mighty GCM )
In order to have an bird-eye overview you can take a look on this image collected form android hive
Server side coding is doesn't need you to be expert in php. So you can go through to this article. It helped me a lot to learn.

Push notification installation in server

I'm trying to get push notification for all the three mobile platform(Android, iOS, Windows phone). I tried looking for many push notification service. like pushwoosh etc... But all have sdk for mobile. Are there any open source that I can use in my server so that it pushed notification for all three platforms. I'm new to this concept. Please suggest. Thanks.
There is a project called pushd (https://github.com/rs/pushd) that you might be interested in. It supports GCM (Google Cloud Messaging) for Android and APNS (Apple Push Notification Service) and also Microsoft's push service.
pushd is a nodejs project that exposes an easy to use JSON/http interface. There is fantastic debugging/logging options.
EDIT: Microsoft has a service (Notification Hubs) that works on all devices which is free for 500 devices. Facebook also recently bought Parse.com which provide a similar service, although not free.

whats the best way to implement real time push messages with apache, php and mysql only?

i'm trying to implement a chat application for android (where users can communicate people who are in same location). i'm thinking it of an facebook messenger with Geo specific oriented. i came across to terms like repeated pull, comet, bosh, websockects, socket programming, xmpp(which requires xmpp capable server like openfire) etc to do this. But my resources are fixed like apache, php (codeignter) and MySql only. I need to find the efficient to way to do this. Guys i need this. Please help me.
Thank you,
abbiya
The preferred approach on Android is Google Cloud Messaging.
Google Cloud Messaging for Android (GCM) is a service that allows you
to send data from your server to your users' Android-powered device.
This could be a lightweight message telling your app there is new data
to be fetched from the server (for instance, a movie uploaded by a
friend), or it could be a message containing up to 4kb of payload data
(so apps like instant messaging can consume the message directly).
The GCM service handles all aspects of queueing of messages and
delivery to the target Android application running on the target
device. GCM is completely free no matter how big your messaging needs
are, and there are no quotas.
Essentially, it works like this: Your server talks to Google, and Google pushes the message in real-time (or nearly so, as long as the device is powered on and connected to the Internet) to the Android device(s). There's a registration process that happens on the Android device the first time the app is installed (and at future points to revalidate the registration). In your Android app, it's your responsibility to send this registration ID to your server so you can store it for future use. Your server uses this registration ID when it wants to push a message to that device.
The communication protocol between your server and Google is JSON over HTTPS. Your server can use any languages/technologies, as long as it can communicate with Google's servers. A PHP/MySQL application can definitely meet the basic requirements for the service:
Before you can write client Android applications that use the GCM
feature, you must have an application server that meets the following
criteria:
Able to communicate with your client.
Able to fire off HTTPS requests to the GCM server.
Able to handle requests and resend then as needed, using exponential back-off.
Able to store the API key and client registration IDs.
On the client side, the Android device must be running API version 8 (Android 2.2) or later. Of course, it's also your Android app's responsibility to process incoming messages (using a BroadcastReceiver, as the Android system sends an Intent to your receiver whenever a message arrives), which allows you to handle messages however you want.

best practice to push to GCM/APN from php

I am currently building a SNS for both web and iphone/android applications.
When an user writes on the wall or leaves a message, the server needs to push notifications to all related users. Users who are logged in on PC will receive it via Socket.io and those who are logged in on iPhone or android apps will get it via GCM/APN.
What is the best way to send push notification(GET) to all these users from a php web server?
cURL seems to do the right work but is extremely slow on my server.
The web server will need to send notifications to at least 3 different servers at once at unnoticeable speed.
Any suggestions?
I'm in the process of building such an application and I have to be honest and advise you to use Zend Framework. There is also a lot of database planning to be done as read/writes to and from a database will be high. Specifically use Zend_Mobile or visit my blog for the gcm solution http://www.rogerethomas.com
Ideally you should run a cluster of servers processing messages and queues. Push messaging can get out of hand quickly and taking the time to plan it properly will pay off I promise you.

Making Android chat application from scratch

I need to make chat application for android. I thought of using PHP script to implement the chat application. Basic idea is to send message form android client to PHP script and making use of PHP script send the messages to the MySQL database. These messages will be broadcasting to other people. But the problem is auto broadcasting messages to other people. Is there a way to do this using android and php?
You can do the following
Make a persistent tcp connection between your device and the PHP server
When a message is broadcast send it over the tcp connection of each device
On the device process this notification and you are good to go.
If you want to use Java on the server side I have your project already finished and ready to ship ;) (just kidding)
But if you are interested check out the Device-To-Device messaging framework of OpenMobster Mobile Cloud platform. The project is free and open source. Here is a link to the Device-To-Device Framework: http://code.google.com/p/openmobster/wiki/D2DPushFramework
and http://code.google.com/p/openmobster/wiki/PushFramework
The above three steps are already taken care of by the framework. The developer just has to focus on the App itself
Good Luck!!!!
Yes there is several ways to do this
you can just post to the server and from the server send push notifications to the mobiles
You can make the mobile keep checking for updates if it exists
You will require to finish these steps ( at least ):
setup a PHP web server
register for Android Push Notification (you probably need that)
create database schema
write your own codes to allow users to submit & retrieve chat messages
security !!!
You'd probably want to use Google's C2DM, though it's not free.
Your php server would get a message from a phone, do it's processing, then make a HTTPS request to Google's C2DM service, which sends the messages to the destination android device.
http://code.google.com/android/c2dm/#push-process
Don't use C2DM, its a deprecated. Please go through the GCM(Global Cloud Messaging),
please follow this link,
http://developer.android.com/google/gcm
Have you heard of Firebase? Firebase. Making a chat app with Firebase is like eating pizza.

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