Windows Azure Mobile Services

Chapter 6

Push Notifications

IN THIS CHAPTER:

• Learn the different types of notifications that are supported by WAMS
• Register your application with the different notification services
• Implement push notification for your application

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

The wrox.com code downloads for this chapter are found at http://www.wrox.com/go/windowsazuremobileservices on the Download Code tab. The code is in the Chapter 6 download and individually named according to the names throughout the chapter.

One of the fundamental principles of designing applications for either Windows 8 or Windows Phone is the notion of “aliveness.” For these applications, this means that there is potentially a constant stream of activity in the Start screen, the Lock screen, or through toast notifications.

To implement this stream, there is a need for periodic updates, and when you architect for periodic updates, you can take two basic approaches. The first is to initiate the updates from the client side using a pull or polling request, in which the client application makes a request to the service to see if any updates need to be processed. Situations certainly exist for which polling is the appropriate approach, but when you have applications that might not be active, or are operating across a connection that is either slow or costly (or both), polling is not the ideal solution.

The second approach takes the opposite tack. Instead of pulling the information on a regular basis, the data is ...