Asynchronous android GAE communication using restlet

Question

I would like to repeatedly (every second) ask for the message (object or value) to GAE (if android client did not create or change something there) from another android device. I need to check it pretty fast, but I know that it happens aproximately once in hour.

I use restlet and I don't want to create new thread and poll by get from this thread every second, because this is very battery consuming. I also don't want to use C2DM.

Is it somehow possible to do this? I have found something about NIO nonblocking http connectors here: http://restlet-code.1609877.n2.nabble.com/Push-data-from-server-using-a-live-HTTP-connection-td2906563.html

But here is described only the client side and I also don't know if this solution would even be possible to use on GAE and how. Does anyone know more about this approach?

Thank you very much in advance.

Answer 1

As the author of uniqush, I created an entry in the FAQ page specific to this question.

Can I use uniqush on Google App Engine?

Yes and no.

If you just want to use GCM on Google App Engine, then there are some code in uniqush-push which you can directly use.

However, because Google App Engine does not support socket connection, there is no way to use APNS. In another work, if you want to setup a server on Google App Engine, you cannot push any notification to iOS devices no matter what software/library you are using.

I did considered to port uniqush to Google App Engine. But because of this fact, I think it may be better to port it until Google let us use client-side socket connections, or provide some way to connect to APNS server.

Again, if you are considering to use Google App Engine as a server for your App, please be aware that you will not be able to push notification to any iOS device right now. If this fact does not bother you, then do it.

Personally, I recommend you to run a server with full control. It is not expensive nowadays. Amazon EC2 or similar cloud products may be a good choice to run uniqush.

As I recommended above, using a (virtual) server with full control would be a better choice if you want to support more platforms besides Android.

If there is any other question, please feel free to reply.

Answer 2

this is similar to Urban Airship but only a fraction of the cost. The API allows you to send a C2DM message to a user via a call. After you implement the broadcast reciever, when a user installs the app they are prompted to accept the message. If they accept a token is sent to the C2DM server identifying the user. This token is then used to send them a message via the C2DM platform. The Zend PHP Framework has built in functions for this but if reliability is a concern go with an external provider like Remote Queries or Urban Airship

Answer 3

For being future proof I would suggest you have a single push notification service for both kind of devices. You can either build on your own, or leverage something like uniqush or this

Also the Urban Airship's SDK would be a good option to look at, more details here