iOS13 apns-push-type header on azure notification hub

1
votes

Starting from iOS 13 and watchOS 6 Apple requires the presence of the header apns-push-type (the value of this header can be alert or background) for push notification.

According to Apple documentation:

The value of this header must accurately reflect the contents of your notification's payload. If there is a mismatch, or if the header is missing on required systems, APNs may delay the delivery of the notification or drop it altogether.

    HEADERS
      - END_STREAM
      + END_HEADERS
      :method = POST
      :scheme = https
      :path = /3/device/xxxxxx
      host = api.sandbox.push.apple.com
      authorization = bearer xxx
      apns-id = xxx-xxx-xxx
      apns-push-type = alert
      apns-expiration = 0
      apns-priority = 10
      apns-topic = com.example.MyApp
    DATA
      + END_STREAM
      { "aps" : { "alert" : "Hello" } }

see Apple doc

Unfortunately using azure notification hub I can only define apscontent but not the header.

{ "aps": { "alert":"Alert message!", "content-available": 1 }, "CustomData": "$(CustomData)" }

How is it handled by azure notification hub? How can I specify the type of the notification?

2
azurepush-notificationios13azure-notificationhub

2 Answers

5
votes

After some experiments and a little bit of investigation, this is the current Azure server behavior...

The server inspects the contents of the notification to infer the correct value.

If "content-available": 1 is present and "alert" is missing then the "apns-push-type" = "background" is added to the header.

If a valid "alert" is present then the "apns-push-type" = "alert" is added to the header.

So take care of having a valid APNS JSON body, with correctly populated content-available/alert properties.

See this discussion thread for more info

UPDATE 2019-10-15: Currently there are some problems with background silent notification See the following discussion: https://github.com/Azure/azure-notificationhubs-dotnet/issues/96

UPDATE 2019-11-25: The server was rejecting installations against APNS that included headers. Now this issue is fixed and the silent notification should work as expected.

1
votes

This answer is not accurate, background push is not working on azure right now. The headers need to be included during sending a push as shown below and also the hub needs to be configured with a key and not a certificate:

var backgroundHeaders = new Dictionary<string, string> { { "apns-push-type", "background" }, { "apns-priority", "5" } };
 Dictionary<string, string> templateParams = new Dictionary<string, string>();
// populated templateParams 

 var notification = new TemplateNotification(templateParams);
 notification.Headers = backgroundHeaders;
// the second parameter is the tag name and the template name as we have it registered from the device.
 var resBack = await hubClient.SendNotificationAsync(notification, tags);