CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpapple-push-notifications
nickdnk
nickdnk

Reputation: 4300

APNs Server for handling streams from PHP script

I have a web server that sends push notifications to devices when certain actions are performed with a POST or GET. This works, but because of the nature of having to open an SSL connection to APNS, write all the tokens and exit, the actions that involve this operation are latent compared to those who do not. The latency is only a second or so, but a second is still significantly longer than say 100ms, which is how long it takes otherwise (if I comment out the APNS part).

It seems that it's also bad practice to open and close the connection to APNS every time you want to send notifications, not only because of the extra time it takes. I believe a better approach would be to have a different server (not running PHP) handle the stream writing to APNS and receive tokens and messages by let's say some kind of python service, perhaps.

Basically:

Web Server sends fwrite by php (unencrypted, no SSL) to a socket on a local server that has a persistent connection to APNS open, which also is asynchronous in its handling of the response from to the APNS operation: The problem is that PHP will wait until it has written all bytes to the socket before it echoes the desired response to the client. I would imagine it takes much less time to fwrite to a local server unencrypted than it does to SSL to APNS. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I don't have a lot of experience with Python, but as far as I know it's not that hard.

I have the tokens stored in MySQL and retrieving and generating the payload with PHP in place and working - it's just slowing everything down the way it's set up now.

I cannot find any guides on this subject - only how to do what I am already doing with fwrite and OpenSSL in PHP.

I seek suggestions as how to best handle this situation.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 413

Answers (1)

Nick
Nick

Reputation: 2613

You don't need to switch to Python to solve this issue. What you could do is tweak your design a bit to resemble more of "dump and purge" concept.

Basically, the scripts that receive the GET and POST calls dump the data related to the push notification payload locally.

In the background, you have a PHP script running all the time that has already established a connection with APNS and just checks constantly if anything has been dumped locally and needs to be sent.

Script A (The dumper):

// ... something triggers a push ...
if ($_GET['something'] == 'foo') {
    $data = // Get all data needed to build push
    createPayload($data); // Dump data somewhere; file or database
}
// ... something else maybe ...
return; // Return asap to not keep client waiting

Script B (The purger):

$apns = // Open connection to Apple Push server
while (TRUE) {
    // Read file or database where payloads get dumped
    $success = (fwrite(payload to $apns));
    sleep(5); // Sleep a bit to avoid CPU going crazy
    if (!$success) {
        // Reopen connection with Apple
    }
}
// Close apns here in case you have a break condition in your loop

Using two scripts instead of one, you will return to your client as quickly as possible and still be able to send push notification quickly to Apple's servers.

Upvotes: 1

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