Azure Notification Hubs Send Notification to Specific Device

Question

I'm currently replacing PostSharp with Azure Notification Hub as post sharp seems to have stopped working in Azure. I have setup my app and it registers its device tag with Azure. I have tested a push notification from the Azure portal broadcasting to all and it works.

However I want to amend my Web API project so I can send notifications to a specific device. Here the code that I have got so far where device tag is the device tag of the iPhone:

var alert = "{\"aps\":{\"alert\":\"Hello from .NET!\"}}";
       await hub.SendAppleNativeNotificationAsync(alert, new List<string> { deviceTag });

This does not work however. I thought I could just send the device tag similar to how post sharp works? I'm a little confused as I know this device has successfully registered with the hub in Azure, because if I do a test broadcast from the portal it receives a notification. How do I amend my API code to send to just a specific device? I came across this article https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/documentation/articles/notification-hubs-aspnet-backend-windows-dotnet-wns-notification/ but it seems odd, as I already know the device token. Is it possible to send a notification to the hub and specify the device tag?

Howard Hoffman Howard Hoffman · Accepted Answer · 2016-10-16T04:14:26

You can definitely send with just the deviceToken. Tags only work if you have registered them with the deviceHandle first. The article you found (and it's siblings discussing Google Cloud/Firebase Messaging and iOS) assume that you're using the Registration / Tags mechanism.

You don't need to do that -- you can use the DirectSend or BatchSend notification mechanisms if you just want to talk directly to deviceTokens. At the "standard" tier you can also use per-message telemetry to find outcomes for calls to Direct or Batch Send.

I started with the Registration oriented examples and then moved to the "direct Send" model -- and we will be developing along those lines. I don't have the iOS implementation working yet, otherwise I'd give you an example with that.

These links may help:

Direct Send
(note that the C# NotificationHubClient type has a SendDirectNotificationAsync method that implements the Direct Send model).
Batch Direct Send
Per-Message-Telemetry
Article putting it all together w/ link to GitHub sample

Azure Notification Hubs Send Notification to Specific Device

2 Answers