Push Notifications – Device, Protocol and Server (/dev/world/2010)
Presenter: Mark Aufflick
Apple Push Notifications are an integral part of many applications, from games like “Words With Friends” to VOIP call notification, but for the non-expert developer they can be a source of mystery. Apple’s “Local and Push Notification Programming Guide” provides details of the binary protocol, SSL certificates and other details which are hardly beginner material. Additionally the guide makes little mention of correct UTF encoding and other small details which create more difficulty for those unfamiliar with data encodings etc. And finally a persistent server is required which can handle the protocols. This talk will take attendees through: an understanding of the service overall; the protocol and its limitations; responding to notifications in the iOS application; approaches to implementing a server in Perl, Python or Ruby.