CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#xamlwindows-phone-8windows-phone
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka

Reputation: 10851

Control application execution under any condition in WP8

I'm trying to build a basic tracking app for Windows Phone 8. However I can't figure out which model to use. The app shall log the location in a definable interval (e.g. 5 sec or even 2 hours).

If I develop the app as an foreground application the tracking will stop if the user opens another program, the screen locks (you can configure the app to continue running under the lock screen), or you reveice a phone call. Overall the risk of the app not being executed is to high.

There are also background tasks that are scheduled by the OS, and are only allowed to run a few seconds or minutes depending on the current state of the phone. Is there some workaround to schedule the background task execution as defined by the user? E.g. the Email client can be set to fetch emails every 15 minutes, therefore there must be some way.

The thrid option would be using the push notification service. This however seems stupid as some third party Microsoft server has to be involved and other limitations may apply. And more importantly, the app must run to receive the notification.

What is best practise on this? I don't care about battery drain as long as the app works as wanted. Similar solutions must exists for tiles that shall be updated more frequently (30 minutes or even more seems awfully long)? Am I missing something?

A basic app that can call it's own sleep would be great, but if it get's killed after a few seconds, that won't do it. Or does sleep time not count?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 242

Answers (1)

MarcinJuraszek
MarcinJuraszek

Reputation: 125650

I'm afraid you can't do anything to make sure about your app execution.

  1. Standard foreground application is always less important than things like incoming phone call, so you have to assume that it can be paused or stopped at any time. You also can't force user to use your app - that's why user is able to exit the app at any time.

  2. Background execution on Windows Phone cannot be made permanent - that's how that OS is designed. And mail application is not a good example because it's a build in app. It was made as a part of that system, so it has another set of rules (if any).

  3. I don't really see a way to do that using Push Notifications. But even if there is one, I'm sure it's not how that feature should be used.

Upvotes: 1

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