Using Push notifications with titanium appcelerator

Question

I am using Titanium's push notification functionality with alloy for Android and iOS. I am initializing push notification subscription from alloy.js, i.e. basically calling CloudPush's retrieveDeviceToken method to get a device token and then

 Cloud.PushNotifications.subscribe({
    channel : _channel,
    device_token : _token,
    type : OS_IOS ? 'ios' : 'android'
  }, function(_event) {..}

The challenge is that, alloy.js gets called everytime I will restart the app. That means a new device token is generated and channel is subscribed again and again on every restart of app.

I am wondering if this is the right way to use the push subscription. Is there a way to avoid these multiple subscriptions from the same device.

Prashant Saini Prashant Saini · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-05T06:07:38

Actually you are doing the right thing, but there is a fact behind Push Notifications:

You will always get a single device token no matter how many times you call CloudPush.retrieveDeviceToken() method.
Device Token will only differ when you will uninstall the app and install it again.
So all you need to do to avoid the subscription to channel multiple times is that Save the device token in Ti.App.Properties and then check for this property whether it has a value or not.

See below code snippet:

var CloudPush = require('ti.cloudpush');

            if ( CloudPush.isGooglePlayServicesAvailable() ) {
                CloudPush.retrieveDeviceToken({
                    success : tokenSuccess,
                    error : tokenError
                });

                // Process incoming push notifications
                CloudPush.addEventListener('callback', pushRecieve);

            } else {
                alert("Please enable Google Play Services to register for notifications.");
            }

// Save the device token for subsequent API calls
function tokenSuccess(e) {
    var previousToken = Ti.App.Properties.getString("DEVICE_TOKEN", "");

    var newToken = "" + e.deviceToken;
    Ti.API.info('** New Device Token = ' + newToken);

    if (newToken !== previousToken) {
        Ti.App.Properties.setString("DEVICE_TOKEN", newToken);  

        var Cloud = require("ti.cloud");

        Cloud.PushNotifications.subscribe({
            channel : _channel,
            device_token : newToken,
            type : OS_IOS ? 'ios' : 'android'
        }, function(_event) {});
    }
}


function tokenError(e) {
    alert('Failed to register for push notifications.');
}

Using Push notifications with titanium appcelerator

1 Answers