Notifications

[srcreigh]

branched from issue #1 with @KartikTalwar

Notifications are important and I haven't worked with them before. Does anyone have experience with them or does research need to be done?

thoughts:

• Not sure if notifications would be coupled with Firebase at all
• I'm not sure if we'll need some kind of simple backend server or something

[VicV]

I've done notifications too many goddamn times.

We'll use GCM. Its straightforward enough.

If not we can do simple polling, but that removes our ability to issue notifications whenever we want.

[srcreigh]

I looked at GCM last night. It seems straightforward enough. 

If we're just pushing notifications to the phone, I was thinking we can just use some kind of script to make those requests and update firebase. We'll have to make sure this is possible for iOS notifications as well, though.

-------- Original message -------- From: Victor Vucicevich notifications@github.com Date:05/05/2014 2:33 PM (GMT-05:00) To: hackthenorth/hackthenorth-android hackthenorth-android@noreply.github.com Cc: Shane Creighton-Young srcreigh@uwaterloo.ca Subject: Re: [hackthenorth-android] Notifications (#4)

I've done notifications too many goddamn times.

We'll use GCM. Its straightforward enough.

If not we can do simple polling, but that removes our ability to issue notifications whenever we want.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[VicV]

It is, its just a bit different.

But yeah thats exactly how GCM works. GCM doesn't only push notifications though, we just push information. So all we have to do is have a case where if we get an "update" command, we just update. Very straightforward.

On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 11:51 AM, Shane Creighton-Young < notifications@github.com> wrote:

I looked at GCM last night. It seems straightforward enough.

If we're just pushing notifications to the phone, I was thinking we can just use some kind of script to make those requests and update firebase. We'll have to make sure this is possible for iOS notifications as well, though.

-------- Original message -------- From: Victor Vucicevich notifications@github.com Date:05/05/2014 2:33 PM (GMT-05:00) To: hackthenorth/hackthenorth-android < hackthenorth-android@noreply.github.com> Cc: Shane Creighton-Young srcreigh@uwaterloo.ca Subject: Re: [hackthenorth-android] Notifications (#4)

I've done notifications too many goddamn times.

We'll use GCM. Its straightforward enough.

If not we can do simple polling, but that removes our ability to issue notifications whenever we want.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/hackthenorth/hackthenorth-android/issues/4#issuecomment-42223398 .

[srcreigh]

Cool. Sounds easy enough.

-------- Original message -------- From: Victor Vucicevich notifications@github.com Date:05/05/2014 2:53 PM (GMT-05:00) To: hackthenorth/hackthenorth-android hackthenorth-android@noreply.github.com Cc: Shane Creighton-Young srcreigh@uwaterloo.ca Subject: Re: [hackthenorth-android] Notifications (#4)

It is, its just a bit different.

But yeah thats exactly how GCM works. GCM doesn't only push notifications though, we just push information. So all we have to do is have a case where if we get an "update" command, we just update. Very straightforward.

On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 11:51 AM, Shane Creighton-Young < notifications@github.com> wrote:

I looked at GCM last night. It seems straightforward enough.

If we're just pushing notifications to the phone, I was thinking we can just use some kind of script to make those requests and update firebase. We'll have to make sure this is possible for iOS notifications as well, though.

-------- Original message -------- From: Victor Vucicevich notifications@github.com Date:05/05/2014 2:33 PM (GMT-05:00) To: hackthenorth/hackthenorth-android < hackthenorth-android@noreply.github.com> Cc: Shane Creighton-Young srcreigh@uwaterloo.ca Subject: Re: [hackthenorth-android] Notifications (#4)

I've done notifications too many goddamn times.

We'll use GCM. Its straightforward enough.

If not we can do simple polling, but that removes our ability to issue notifications whenever we want.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/hackthenorth/hackthenorth-android/issues/4#issuecomment-42223398 .

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[srcreigh]

Hey @VicV, I was thinking about this more last night:

• We can use Firebase to keep track of all the device IDs that we need to send notifications to.
• We can write an update script (in python or whatever) that does a few things:
  1. Takes input from the user
  2. Makes a push/post to Firebase
  3. Reads all the device IDs from Firebase
  4. Makes the GCM HTTP requests (in the future iOS too)

LMK what you think of this design.

[KartikTalwar]

side note: how long does it take for an app to be published to both stores?

[srcreigh]

On iOS to be safe we should allocate two weeks, although it usually doesnt take more than a week and sometimes takes like a day. So... we should start very soon.

For Android, the turnaround time is a few hours.

[KartikTalwar]

cool, lets have things ship out by end of August then

On Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 11:15 AM, Shane Creighton-Young < notifications@github.com> wrote:

On iOS to be safe we should allocate two weeks, although it usually doesnt take more than a week and sometimes takes like a day. So... we should start very soon.

For Android, the turnaround time is a few hours.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/hackthenorth/hackthenorth-android/issues/4#issuecomment-47965502 .

[sitefeng]

http://appreviewtimes.com

[KartikTalwar]

not bad. let's have end of August as our deadline