CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iossocketsapple-push-notificationschat
Ryan Murphy
Ryan Murphy

Reputation: 163

Can Apple Push Notifications be used as message queues?

Lets say I have a chat application and I am messaging another user (User B), our messages are being received normally using sockets, however when the User B goes offline he is disconnected from the socket server however user A is continues to text him so my server issues a push notification to User B's device for every message User A sends. My question is will APNS act as a message broker and queue all the messages until User B logs back in and receives them? Or do I have to store unreceived messages elsewhere

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1030

Answers (1)

marko
marko

Reputation: 9159

The answer is readily found in Apple's documentation

Apple Push Notification service includes a Quality of Service (QoS) component that performs a store-and-forward function. If APNs attempts to deliver a notification and the destination device is offline, APNs stores the notification for a limited period of time and delivers it when the device becomes available again. This component stores only the most recent notification per device and per app. If a device is offline, sending a notification request targeting that device causes the previous request to be discarded. If a device remains offline for a long time, all its stored notifications in APNs are discarded.

So, no, you can't use APN as a message broker.

You can use the push notification as a signal to wake up and sync with a server-side message queue. RabbitMQ or Kafka might be candidate brokers, and MQTT looks promising as a protocol. You will need to work out how and when you discard the contents of message queues that are not successfully delivered to a device.

Upvotes: 3

Related Questions