Notification System

#Notification system

About

The weSPOT notification system builds upon existing technologies.

• The Google Channel API creates a persistent connection between the client and server. This technology offers a JavaScript client that delivers notification messages to the client without the use of polling. A long-held HTTP request enables the server to push data to the HTTP client. As a notification message is available for the client, the server will return an HTTP response to the long-held HTTP request.
• Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) helps developers to send data from a server to an Android application. Rather than having every single Android application maintaining an open bidirectional communication channel with the server, this technology enables sharing a persistent XMPP communication channel across applications.
• Apple Push Notifications (APN) is a technology similar to GCM that enables asynchronously sending a notification to an iOS device*The payload of an APN JSON message is constrained to 256 bytes. APN messages are thus suited for “send-to-sync” messages.

##Architecture

This picture illustrates how the mobile notification system offers an API to the weSPOT components (2). When this API is triggered, the notification system (3) sends a notification via various technologies (GCM, APN or Google Channel API) to the target component that requires a notification (4).