114: It's All Unified

iOhYes

Discussion - Notifications in iOS 10

• Brief breakdown of WWDC sessions related to notifications
  • What’s New in the Apple Push Notification Service
  • Introduction to Notifications
  • Advanced Notifications
• New stuff
  • APNS Token-based authentication
  • UserNotifications (and UserNotificationsUI) Framework (Unifies Remote and Local Notifications)
  • Access to user-defined notification settings
  • Expanded content
    • Titles
    • Subtitles
    • Media attachments
  • Scheduling and handling within Extensions
  • In-app presentation
  • Removal/update of pending notifications
  • Dismissal actions
  • Service Extensions
• APNS Token-based authentication
  • Uses JSON Web Tokens (libraries widely available to assist with token generation)
  • For server-side solutions where using a certificate isn’t practical/feasible
  • Addresses issue of certificate expiration (though tokens also expire, new ones can be generated on the fly)

• UserNotifications Framework

  • Provides a single notifications API across iOS, watchOS and tvOS
    • iOS: Full support for scheduling and management of notifications
    • watchOS: Support for forwarded notifications and local notifications on the watch
    • tvOS: Support for badging app icons
  • Key components/concepts:
    • UNUserNotificationCenter
      • Authorization requests
      • Scheduling via requests (by providing content and triggers)
    • UNNotificationRequest
      • Identifier
      • Content
      • Trigger
    • UNMutableNotificationContent
    • UNNotificationAttachment
      • Audio
      • Images
      • Video
    • Triggers
      • Push (UNPushNotificationTrigger is not instantiated by apps)
      • UNTimeIntervalNotificationTrigger
      • UNCalendarNotificationTrigger
      • UNLocationNotificationTrigger
    • UNUserNotificationCenterDelegate Protocol
      • userNotificationCenter:willPresentNotification:withCompletionHandler:
      • userNotificationCenter:didReceiveNotificationResponse:withCompletionHandler
    • UNNotificationCategory - defines a type of notification, allows actionable notifications and content extensions
    • UNNotificationAction - represents a task you can perform in response to a notification
    • UNNotificationServiceExtension - Entry point for service extensions. Allows you to process the payload of a push notification before it is presented (eg: end-to-end encryption or notification attachments). Use in conjunction with “mutable-content: 1” in the aps portion of an APNS payload.

• UserNotificationsUI Framework

  • Provides the UNNotificationContentExtension protocol
  • View controllers adopt this protocol, using the VC’s view to display the notification contents
  • Custom content is sandwiched between a header with the application icon and title and the default notification payload (default payload can be hidden using an attribute in the Info.plist)
  • No user interaction
  • Actions are displayed and extensions can respond to them by intercepting action responses
  • Protocol provides a didRecieveNotification: method you can use to set up UI in response to the notification

Picks

Darryl

• New Swift, Core Data and Cocoa Books - Use Your Loaf

John

• List of Public Slack Groups
• Mr Robot returns to USA Network July 13

This episode sponsored by Braintree