Azure Mobile Services - Push Notification registration not working [ios]

Question

I'm building an iOS app that connects to an Azure Mobile Service Backend to send push notifications - everytime a new item is inserted in a table. It seems that the registration is not working, because in the dashboard of the notification hub I can see some "Registration Operations", but I can't see any registrations in Visual Studio Server Explorer, also Push Notifications are not arriving on the device.

I use this code to register for remote notifications on my iOS client. This code runs fine, I don't get any errors.

- (void)application:(UIApplication *)application didRegisterForRemoteNotificationsWithDeviceToken:(NSData *)deviceToken {
    [self.client.push registerNativeWithDeviceToken:deviceToken tags:nil completion:^(NSError *error) {
        if (error != nil) {
            NSLog(@"Error registering for notifications: %@", error);
        }
    }];
}

This code is executed to insert a new item in the table storage of the mobile service.

NSDictionary *dbitem = @{ @"message" : @"test"};       
MSTable *itemTable = [client tableWithName:@"TestTable"];
[itemTable insert:dbitem completion:^(NSDictionary *insertedItem, NSError *error) {
    if (error) {
        NSLog(@"Error: %@", error);
    } else {
        NSLog(@"Item inserted, id: %@", [insertedItem objectForKey:@"id"]);
    }
}];

Inserting works fine, the items show up in the table storage. Everytime a new item is inserted in the table, this script will run (Javascript - Node.js Backend)

function insert(item, user, request) {
    var userId = user.userId;
            request.execute({
        success: function() {
            request.respond();
            push.apns.send(userId, {
                    alert: "Hello!",
                    payload: {
                        inAppMessage: item.message
                    }
            });
        }

    });
}

And finally here is the registration script I'm using to register a new user for push notifications.

exports.register = function (registration, registrationContext, done) {   
    // Get the ID of the logged-in user.
    var userId = registrationContext.user.userId;    
console.log("userid: %j", userId);
    // Perform a check here for any disallowed tags.
    if (!validateTags(registration))
    {
        // Return a service error when the client tries 
        // to set a user ID tag, which is not allowed.      
        done("You cannot supply a tag that is a user ID"); 
        console.log("failed registraion");     
    }
    else{
        // Add a new tag that is the user ID.
        registration.tags.push(userId);
        console.log("done registraion");     
        // Complete the callback as normal.
        done();
    }
};

function validateTags(registration){
    for(var i = 0; i < registration.tags.length; i++) { 
        console.log(registration.tags[i]);           
        if (registration.tags[i]
        .search(/facebook:|twitter:|google:|microsoft:/i) !== -1){
            return false;
        }
        return true;
    }
}

As you can see in the screenshot of the Visual Studio Server Explorer - there are no registrations for the notification hub. The output of the monitor tab in the management portal is here.

I know that this is quite a long question, but if you know what the problem of not arriving push notifications could be - please let me know! Thank you

Did you ever resolve this issue? I'm currently having the same issue: Registrations don't error but don't succeed. — rooby

Unknown Unknown · Accepted Answer · 2015-11-26T01:47:16

In the didRegisterForRemoteNotificationsWithDeviceToken function, you get a deviceToken which starts with '<' and ends with '>'.

You should try by removing those characters, on swift I did this:

var deviceTokenString = "\(deviceToken)"
deviceTokenString = deviceTokenString.stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString("<", withString: "")
deviceTokenString = deviceTokenString.stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString(">", withString: "")

Apparently the registration succeeds (that's why didFailToRegisterForRemoteNotificationsWithError is never called) but it also fails, weird.

I sugest you navigate to your mobile service, to the push tab and click on the notification hub. In the service bus notification hub, you have a debug tab, which will allow you to test your notifications. Every time you send a notification from there, you can see a list with the registrations.

Hope this helped.

Azure Mobile Services - Push Notification registration not working [ios]

1 Answers