[aerogear-dev] Non-Native Push Discussion

[Kris Borchers]

Hey all,

So I wanted to start thinking about the spec and APIs that will be used for non-native push notifications. In order to do that, I first wanted to just throw my understanding of things and some very preliminary initial thoughts out there for discussion so we are all on the same page before any implementation begins. I have written those thoughts in this gist https://gist.github.com/kborchers/694f09159e85d861cf3b and have also pasted the contents of that gist below to provide easier inline comments and discussion.

Thanks!



#Non-Native Push (NNP)

The ability to "push" messages to a JavaScript client is an interesting yet complicated problem to solve. There are a number of factors to take into account. Below is a summary of some of those factors and thoughts on how to address them.

## NNP vs. Notifier

I first want to address the idea of NNP vs. Notifier as a whole. The way I see it, NNP is an adapter in the grand Notifier scheme. Notifier would be the umbrella object that would be a factory for generating notifier clients based on different adapters. There could be adapters for vert.x (thinking about renaming that adapter to SockJS since that's more what it is I believe), Atmosphere, or for purposes of this discussion, NNP.

## Server Side

On the server side, the NNP bits should be flexible. Since there is no defined method for sending a NNP message to a client like there is for native implementations like iOS and Android, the NNP parts should be flexible enough to work in tandom with those native bits. It should also be possible to send messages to only NNP clients, only native clients (both all native or by OS), all client types, or individual clients of a particular registered app. It would also be nice to be able to send NNP messages to individual devices which should be possible through either some sort of authentication system or via individual channels of currently connected clients. Another nice feature to have would be the ability to queue messages for NNP clients that are not currently connected. This would involve determining some method for message prioritization as well as expiration to avoid extremely long and/or oudated message queues. These messages could then be delivered when a particular client "phones home" either through the previously mentioned authentication method or channel subscription.

## Client Side

The client will also be very flexible in relationship to native push. Again, since there is no real standard for NNP, the client should be built to accept what ever unified payload is designed to work for the native push. That way this will again provide for seamless integration with the unified push.
The client will be built as an adapter of Notifier allowing an AeroGear user to manage all notification messaging (Push, Pub/Sub, etc) in one place. This means that the spec and APIs for Notifier need to be decided and documented before or at the same time as the NNP is being developed.

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