Dear all,
I'm about to start work on a mobile app for a local fitness trainer.
It's a small-scale outfit and they don't want to have to manage a website and database as such, so I'm going to equip the app with a local SQLite database, containing the times and locations of fitness sessions, which happen on a weekly basis.
I would like to give instructors the means to push messages to the app in the event of a class being cancelled due to traffic or illness.
Can anyone point me to a way to achieve this?
Also, if the general timetable should change, is there a way to push changes to the SQLite database without the need for a complete app update?
Thanks in advance,
Pete
Push notifications and SQLite updates
Moderators: FourthWorld, heatherlaine, Klaus, kevinmiller, robinmiller
Re: Push notifications and SQLite updates
Pete,
There are a couple of things:
1) There are two kinds of notifications, locally and push. Local means that your app can set up notifications that fire on the local device, like calendar reminders. Push notifications are notifications that are sent to remote devices. If you are trying to update clients, then you would be using push, and in that case you need a machine running at least a daemon to send the messages, or you can subscribe to a service to do it. You can also use an app like remind, which sends out text blasts, but integrating it with your app is something you would have to chase (a cool idea, but I don't think any of us have done it).
2) Other app updates, where you do not want to have your own server, would involve the use of a cloud service to store your data. We have used dropbox and google for this purpose, but I'm part way through getting box working, too.
There are a couple of things:
1) There are two kinds of notifications, locally and push. Local means that your app can set up notifications that fire on the local device, like calendar reminders. Push notifications are notifications that are sent to remote devices. If you are trying to update clients, then you would be using push, and in that case you need a machine running at least a daemon to send the messages, or you can subscribe to a service to do it. You can also use an app like remind, which sends out text blasts, but integrating it with your app is something you would have to chase (a cool idea, but I don't think any of us have done it).
2) Other app updates, where you do not want to have your own server, would involve the use of a cloud service to store your data. We have used dropbox and google for this purpose, but I'm part way through getting box working, too.
Re: Push notifications and SQLite updates
Pete,
The idea got my interest piqued, so I've sent an email to remind to ask them about an API. We'll see what they say. That would, I think, be the easiest way to implement this idea, because then only the instructor would need to have the app.
The idea got my interest piqued, so I've sent an email to remind to ask them about an API. We'll see what they say. That would, I think, be the easiest way to implement this idea, because then only the instructor would need to have the app.
Re: Push notifications and SQLite updates
Thanks!
Pete
Pete
Re: Push notifications and SQLite updates
Remind doesn't even have a production API, yet, so I asked to be put on their alpha/beta list. We'll see when we have something to work with. I'm not sure what other SMS options we have with LC, but I'm not aware of any.
Re: Push notifications and SQLite updates
It looks like you can send SMS's with mergMessage, so that would be the other way to blast out to class members from your app.