Tag and Broadcast Notifications in Native Windows 8 Applications

Overview

Prerequisite: Make sure that you read the Push notifications in native Windows 8 applications tutorial first.

Tag notifications are notification messages that are targeted to all the devices that are subscribed to a particular tag.
Tags represent topics of interest to the user and provide the ability to receive notifications according to the chosen interest.

Broadcast notifications are a form of tag push notifications that are targeted to all subscribed devices. Broadcast notifications are enabled by default for any push-enabled MobileFirst application by a subscription to a reserved Push.all tag (auto-created for every device). This ability can be disabled by by unsubscribing from the reserved Push.all tag.

Agenda

• Notifications configuration
• Notifications API
• Sample application

Notifications configuration

Tag Notifications configuration

Setting up tags

Tags are defined in the application-descriptor.xml file:

<nativeWindows8App xmlns="http://www.worklight.com/native-windows8-descriptor" id="NativeWin8TagNotifications" platformVersion="7.0.0.00.20150312-0731" version="1.0"></p>
<pushSender clientSecret="WNS_CLIENT_SECRET" packageSID="WNS_PACKAGE_SID"/>
...
...
...
<tags>
    <tag>
        <name>my tag 1</name>
        <description>About my tag 1</description>
    </tag>
    <tag>
        <name>my tag 2</name>
        <description>About my tag 2</description>
    </tag>
</tags>

Notifications API

API methods for tag notifications

Client-side API

• WLPush.subscribeTag(tagName,options) - Subscribes the device to the specified tag name.
• WLPush.unsubscribeTag(tagName,options) - Unsubscribes the device from the specified tag name.
• WLPush.isTagSubscribed(tagName) - Returns whether the device is subscribed to a specified tag name.

Common API methods for tag and broadcast notifications

Client-side API

• WLNotificationListener
  Defines the callback method to be notified when the notification arrives.
• WLPush.notificationListener = new MyNotificationListener();
  Sets the implementation class of the WLNotificationListener interface.
• WLPush.onReadyToSubscribeListener
  This method registers a listener to be used for push notifications. This listener should implement the onReadyToSubscribe() method.
• The onMessage(props,payload) method of WLNotificationListener is called when a push notification is received by the device.
  • props - A JSON block that contains the notifications properties of the platform.
  • payload - A JSON block that contains other data that is sent from MobileFirst Server. The JSON block also contains the tag name for tag-based or broadcast notification. The tag name appears in the "tag" element. For broadcast notification, the default tag name is Push.ALL.

Server-side API

WL.Server.sendMessage(applicationId,notificationOptions)
This method submits a notification based on the specified target parameters and takes two mandatory parameters:

• applicationId - (mandatory) The name of the MobileFirst application
• notificationOptions - (mandatory) A JSON block containing message properties

For a full list of message properties, see the WL.Server.sendMessage API in the API reference of the user documentation.

Sample application

Click to download the MobileFirst project.
Click to download the Native project.

• The TagNotifications project contains a MobileFirst native API that you can deploy to your MobileFirst Server instance.
• The TagNotificationsWin8 project contains a native Windows 8 Universal application that uses a MobileFirst native API library to subscribe to push notifications and receive notifications from Windows Notification Services (WNS).
• Make sure to update the wlclient.properties file in the native project with the relevant server settings.

Sending a notification

To test the application is able to receive a push notification you can perform one of the following:

1. From MobileFirst Studio, right-click the adapter folder, select Call MobileFirst Adapter and:
   • If selecting the "sendBroadcastNotification" procedure, provide the application ID and notification text in quotation marks.
   • If selecting the "sendTagNotification" procedure, provide the application ID, notification text and tag name in quotation marks.
   • The application ID can be determined from the id attribute in application-descriptor.xml:

     <application ... id="NativeWin8TagNotifications" ...>

2. If using the CLI:

   $ mfp adapter call
   [?] Which endpoint do you want to use? PushAdapter/sendBroadcastNotification
   [?] Enter the comma-separated parameters: "NativeWin8TagNotifications","hello"
   [?] How should the procedure be called? GET

   Or:

   $ mfp adapter call
   [?] Which endpoint do you want to use? PushAdapter/sendTagNotification
   [?] Enter the comma-separated parameters: "NativeWin8TagNotifications","hello","sample-tag1"
   [?] How should the procedure be called? GET