Push notification in xamarin.forms

0
votes

I asking this question for clarification about push notification in xamarin. I have a xamarin.forms app which will display certain items in list view.The back-end of my app is in .Net. The items which shows in list view inside app is added from back-end.What I am trying to achieve is whenever items add in back-end, I want to receive notification in my app.

For the notification part I found two options.

  1. FirebasePlugin Link
  2. Azure push notification

I need some clarifications about

  1. Which way should I follow? Is there any other cost effective way to implement push notifications in ios and android in cross platform way(Xamarin.forms)?
  2. For implementing push notifications in ios ,is APN certificate is mandatory? Currently I don't have apple developer account.So for testing notification in ios seems difficult. Any help or guidance is appreciated
3
xamarin.forms
Hi , if answer be helpful , remember to mark it when have time :) – Junior Jiang
@JuniorJiang-MSFT Hi I little bit confused now. One answer suggest to use firebase and another one suggest app center. – Anand
Okey , it depends on you . You can discuss with your team members to decide which one to choose . – Junior Jiang

3 Answers

1
votes
  1. Which way should I follow? Is there any other cost effective way to implement push notifications in ios and android in cross platform way(Xamarin.forms)?

From my experience the easiest way for me was to use firebase console to manage notifications both for Android and iOS. I have similar platform that uses push notifications to users whenever webapp database is updated, by certain users. To my disappointment Azure Push were more complicated to manage.

  1. For implementing push notifications in ios ,is APN certificate is mandatory? Currently I don't have apple developer account.So for testing notification in ios seems difficult. Any help or guidance is appreciated

Yes. Apple developer account is mandatory. Moreover you cannot test your push notifications on iOS emulator. You must use physical device.

1
votes

App Center Push is what I've started using now. Push services are free (which is great) and they have Xamarin SDKs which handle most of the platform specific config so it's really quick to get push working.

As the other answer has stated, you will still need an apple developer account and physical device to test on iOS.

It's part of the the Microsoft App Center offering which provides many other useful services for mobile development.

1
votes

@groveale App Center Push feature is being retired(https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/appcenter/push/) so I would suggest using firebase or the implementation provided by xamarin docs.