Chapter 15. Receiving Messages from the Cloud Using Push Notification

Push notification is a server to client, or cloud to phone, messaging system that allows notifications to be sent from the cloud to the phone and then displayed to the phone user. Notifications are one-way messages that are normally associated with a particular application and may be delivered both while the application is running and not running. The main purpose of the push notification system is to reduce the power consumption of the phone device, thereby increasing battery life.

This chapter begins with an overview of push notification, starting with the three types of push notifications: toast, tile, and raw notifications. The chapter examines the various types of channel errors that can occur during push notification and how the phone’s battery level affects delivery of push notifications. Cloud service authentication using X.509 certificates is also discussed, as well as how to update an application tile without tile notifications using shell tile schedules.

Finally, the chapter explores a custom stock ticker sample app that allows the user to enter a stock symbol into the phone, after which a cloud service periodically notifies the phone of stock price variations.