Create Your Own:Mobile Push-Notification Service

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Starting Point

• To expedite the tutorial process, I’ve already created three models:

• User

• Device

• Permitted Apps

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app/models/user.rb

app/models/device.rb

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app/models/permitted_app.rb

Permitted App Migration

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User and Device Migrations

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Step 2(ish): Routesconfig/routes.rb

lib/app_constraints.rb

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Behold, a versioned API

So, /api/users/ will default to version 1 of our API.

Is this a good idea? There’s a LOT of discussion about versioning APIs...http://apiux.com/2013/05/14/api-versioning/https://mathieu.fenniak.net/aint-nobody-got-time-for-that-api-versioning/http://railscasts.com/episodes/350-rest-api-versioning

Do what feels comfortable / correct. I’m not too keen on having a default API route which may change behind-the-scenes, and inadvertently break applications that use the API.Monday, January 13, 14

Controllers and Authentication

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Controllers cont.

Additional infohttp://railscasts.com/episodes/350-rest-api-versioning?view=asciicasthttp://collectiveidea.com/blog/archives/2013/06/13/building-awesome-rails-apis-part-1/http://railsware.com/blog/2013/04/08/api-with-ruby-on-rails-useful-trickshttps://github.com/rails-api/active_model_serializers

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Authentication

Additional infohttp://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionController/HttpAuthentication/Token.htmlhttp://railscasts.com/episodes/352-securing-an-api?view=asciicast

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Authentication in Action

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Cool, we have a Users Resource which is accessible via the routes we’ve created on /api/users... what does that have to

do with sending push-notifications to phones?

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How do Push Notifications work? (iOS)

Good documentation of the process can be found on Adobe’s site for Adobe AIR (seriously)http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/articles/ios-push-notifications.html

Phase 1 Phase 2

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Next, install a background processing system of your choice

https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/categories/Background_Jobs

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iOS worker for Sidekiq

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Android worker for Sidekiq

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Final example• A final example with some additional features is available [1]

• Much credit is due to Ryan Bates for the API skeleton [2] and authentication implementation [3], and wellwithme.com for their original Android/iOS push notifications tutorial. [4]

[1] https://bitbucket.org/momer/example-mobile-pns/src[2] http://railscasts.com/episodes/350-rest-api-versioning[3] http://railscasts.com/episodes/352-securing-an-api[4] http://blog.wellwith.me/how-to-send-ios-and-android-notifications-from-your-rails-backend

• Primary Gems used:

• Sidekiq

• Sidetiq

• Grocer

• GCM

• Active Model Serializers

• Friendly ID

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