Hey everyone,

Unfortunately earlier tonight some code was deployed with functionality only compatible with the new version of the devRant app that will be coming out early this week. It caused some weird issues where normal rants would be rendered as collabs causing them to not show up correctly.

This happened when going to rants from the feed (fixed earlier) and going to rants from push notifications (fixed a little while ago).

If you notice any of that behavior still occurring please let me know, thanks!

Apologies for the weirdness and missed notif activity for those who were impacted.

So I've been screaming for months that push notifications are not reliable enough to build critical functionality on top of. Management won't listen and keep pushing ahead with making teams use it because its cheap and easy.

Been debugging an issue on/off for several weeks. Turns out someone in management asked the backend team to cut the expiration time of items down to 5 minutes to increase throughput (without telling mobile). Notifications are regularly taking +4 mins to get to the phones, leaving our users with barely any time to react. They are now complaining.

I swear if there is a single IQ point available between the whole team i've yet to see any evidence of it

App developers, the fastest way for me to uninstall your application is for you to start sending push notifications for things that are completely unnecessary. They won't remind me to use the app. They'll remind me to uninstall it.

So in my culture when u have hiccups it is believed that someone is mentioning/talking about you, that means that hiccups are one of the first versions of push notifications 😅

Me: Hi Guys, theres no docs on our custom push notification / deeplinking implementation. I've tried to work backwards from a QA testing doc to add new links. Can someone tell me if this is all ok? It seems to behave a little weird.

Dev: Looks ok, but we've moved to the braze platform for sending notifications. You'll need to trigger braze notifications now. Test that it works ok with that <confluence-link>

*hour later*

Me: I've tried the debugging tool, both with my payload and one of the samples from the link. It displays on the phone, but tapping it doesn't trigger the deeplinking.

Dev: No it works, try one of these <screenshot of samples I used>

*hour later*

Me: Tried it again on the real device to make sure, as well as on develop and master. Not working with those samples or mine.

Dev: No it does. It comes in here in this library <github link to line of code>

Me: ... Nope, debugged it, it doesn't get passed the next 'if' check on the next line as its missing a key/value. The whole function does nothing.

Dev: Oh do you want to send a braze notification?

Me: ..... you told me I had too .... yes I guess.

Dev: ok for a braze notification it works different, send this <entirely different sample no where on the link>

Me: ...... but ..... this is only for braze notifications ..... why .... all the samples have deeplink url's .... but they don't ....... are you ..... FFS!!!!! !@#?!

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

┻━┻ ︵ヽ(`Д´)ﾉ︵ ┻━┻

(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻

┌П┐(ಠ_ಠ)

Dev: To send push notifications, please open a ticket to get access to the new tool we are using which is dedicated to managing push notifications and push notification campaigns.

Me: ok done.

*5 days later*

Tool owner: Can you please add to the ticket the reason you need access?

Me: “To use it”

Sometimes I have really loose the will to live and find myself face palming multiple times.

I added live chat software a web frontend for a client. Very easy job that consisted of pasting in some embed code. The actual software is very good and has native ios/andriod apps - something specifically requested.

I got a call from my client about an hour ago, saying there is a "serious issue with the live chat".

My client stated the live chat won't work when his staff go home. He asked me what my solution to this was.

Saying "wtf" many times to myself I directed him to a settings within the chat software i.e. an "away mode" where an email is sent when no chat agents are available.

This apparently wasn't good enough and said I hadn't followed his brief of "adding life chat software to the website", which I had.

After a lengthy discussion I found the root of his frustration. He'd signed a contract with a client of his own, stating there would be 24/7 support via live chat on the website.

Obviously there a huge difference between adding a chat widget to a website and committing to having it manned 24/7 :)

After a further 10 minutes of trying push the blame on myself, the client insisted of having the chat software "appear" as someone was always online, even when they are not (people need to sleep ya know!).

Bu design, the chat software requires at least one agent be logged in before the chat status changes to "online" - why wouldn't it.

After a little while I was seriously wondering why I'm involved in this conversation. I jokingly stated: "Well you could always install Andriod/iOS app on your phone, login and permanently leave it running in background. You'd get lots of notifications, but the site would say the live is always online".

The latter was something I said in jest. To my surprise the client said he'd do that on his own phone going forwards. He actually thanked me for my "resourcefulness", lol.

I'm looking at the same dashboard now and there are 407 pending chat requests - his phone must literally be blowing up notifications :)

if people are curious of the PTSD baggage i'm carrying and why i rage so much at everything, see attached picture

granted, this was partly my fault, as i said, i was far too nice, and stayed for far too long

also note this job was AFTER a 2+ previous e-commerce job with ultimately failed project and little pay

UG i mean LOOK at this... i could go on and on for hours "push notifications must run" - yeah a casual bullet point that needs to be finished by end of day? hahahaha

So I'm back from vacation! It's my first day back, and I'm feeling refreshed and chipper, and motivated to get a bunch of things done quickly so I can slack off a bit later. It's a great plan.

First up: I need to finish up tiny thing from my previous ticket -- I had overlooked it in the description before. (I couldn't test this feature [push notifications] locally so I left it to QA to test while I was gone.)

It amounted to changing how we pull a due date out of the DB; some merchants use X, a couple use Y. Instead of hardcoding them, it would use a setting that admins can update on the fly.

Several methods deep, the current due date gets pulled indirectly from another class, so it's non-trivial to update; I start working through it.

But wait, if we're displaying a due date that differs from the date we're actually using internally, that's legit bad. So I investigate if I need to update the internals, too.

After awhile, I start to make lunch. I ask my boss if it's display-only (best case) and... no response. More investigating.

I start to make a late lunch. A wild sickness appears! Rush to bathroom; lose two turns.

I come back and get distracted by more investigating. I start to make an early dinner... and end up making dinner for my monster instead.

Boss responds, tells me it's just for display (yay!) and that we should use <macro resource feature> instead.

I talk to Mr. Product about which macros I should add; he doesn't respond.

I go back to making lunch-turn-dinner for myself; monster comes back and he's still hungry (as he never asks for more), so I make him dinner.

I check Slack again; Mr. Product still hasn't responded. I go back to making dinner.

Most of the way through cooking, I get a notification! Product says he's talking it through with my boss, who will update me on it. Okay fine. I finish making dinner and go eat.

No response from boss; I start looking through my next ticket.

No response from boss. I ping him and ask for an update, and he says "What are you talking about?" Apparently product never talked to bossmang =/ I ask him about the resources, and he says there's no need to create any more as the one I need already exists! Yay!

So my feature went from a large, complex refactor all the way down to a -1+2 diff. That's freaking amazing, and it only took the entire day!

I run the related specs, which take forever, then commit and push.

Push rejected; pull first! Fair, I have been gone for two weeks. I pull, and git complains about my .gitignore and some local changes. fine, whatever. Except I forgot I had my .gitignore ignored (skipped worktree). Finally figure that out, clean up my tree, and merge.

Time to run the specs again! Gems are out of date. Okay, I go run `bundle install` and ... Ruby is no longer installed? Turns out one of the changes was an upgrade to Ruby 2.5.8.

Alright, I run `rvm use ruby-2.5.8` and.... rvm: command not found. What. I inspect the errors from before and... ah! Someone's brain fell out and they installed rbenv instead of the expected rvm on my mac. Fine, time to figure it out. `rbenv which ruby`; error. `rbenv install --list`; skyscraper-long list that contains bloody everything EXCEPT 2.5.8! Literally 2.5 through 2.5.7 and then 2.6.0-dev. asjdfklasdjf

Then I remember before I left people on Slack made a big deal about upgrading Ruby, so I go looking. Dummy me forgot about the search feature for a painful ten minutes. :( Search found the upgrade instructions right away, ofc. I follow them, and... each step takes freaking forever. Meanwhile my children are having a yelling duet in the immediate background, punctuated with screams and banging toys on furniture.

Eventually (seriously like twenty-five minutes later) I make it through the list. I cd into my project directory and... I get an error message and I'm not in the project directory? what. Oh, it's a zsh thing. k, I work around that, and try to run my specs. Fail.

I need to update my gems; k. `bundle install` and... twenty minutes later... all done.

I go to run my specs and... RubyMine reports I'm using 2.5.4 instead of 2.5.8? That can't be right. `ruby --version` reports 2.5.8; `rbenv version` reports 2.5.8? Fuck it, I've fought with this long enough. Restarting fixes everything, right? So I restart. when my mac comes back to life, I try again; same issue. After fighting for another ten minutes, I find a version toggle in RubyMine's settings, and update it to 2.5.8. It indexes for five minutes. ugh.

Also! After the restart, this company-installed surveillance "security" runs and lags my computer to hell. Highest spec MacBook Pro and it takes 2-5 seconds just to switch between desktops!

I run specs again. Hey look! Missing dependency: no execjs. I can't run the specs.

Fuck. This. I'll just push and let the CI run specs for me.

I just don't care anymore. It's now 8pm and I've spent the past 11 hours on a -1+2 diff!

What a great first day back! Everything is just the way I left it.

How to fail (successfully):

Build your startup with Firebase.

Sure you know this one:

* Mobile project with realtime notifications
* CEO asks for push implemented with own sockets instead of using firebase or gcm
* Spends loads of time of money and time
* Asks to dev why It costs so much
* Blames the dev for socket implementatiom

Finally finished the screwdriver followup ticket. I think.

I spent almost two full days (14 hours) on a seemingly simple bug on Friday, and then another four hours yesterday. Worse yet: I can’t test this locally due to how Apple notifications work, so I can only debug this on one particular server that lives outside of our VPN — which is ofc in high demand. And the servers are unreliable, often have incorrect configuration, missing data, random 504s, and ssh likes to disconnect. Especially while running setup scripts, hence the above. So it’s difficult to know if things are failing because there’s a bug or the server is just a piece of shit, or just doesn’t like you that day.

But the worst fucking part of all? The bug appeared different on Monday than it did on Friday. Like, significantly different.

On Friday, a particular event killed all notifications for all subsequent events thereafter, even unrelated ones, and nothing would cause them to work again. This had me diving through the bowels of several systems, scouring the application logs, replicating the issue across multiple devices, etc. I verified the exact same behavior several times over, and it made absolutely no sense. I wrote specs to verify the screwdriver code worked as expected, and it always did. But an integration test that used consumer-facing controller actions exhibited the behavior, so it wasn’t in my code.

On Monday while someone else was watching: That particular event killed all notifications but ONLY FOR RELATED EVENTS, AND THEY RESUMED AFTER ANOTHER EVENT. All other events and their notifications worked perfectly.

AKL;SJF;LSF

I think I fixed it — waiting on verification — and if it is indeed fixed, it was because two fucking push event records were treated as unique and silently failing to save, run callbacks, etc.

BUT THIS DOESN’T MATCH WHAT I VERIFIED MULTIPLE TIMES! ASDFJ;AKLSDF

I’m so fucking done with this bs.

Damn Apple. These stupid certificates. I only want to send notifications. On Android I have to add one API key. And you Apple? Struggeling to get ionic push working for 6 hours...

So I set up push notifications from my Raspberry Pi to my Android phone, to know when exim sent a mail locally.
The easy part was the actual push notifications.
The more tedious part turned out to be looking for a way to send a notification for each mail.
After some research, Procmail seemed to be the only fitting tool to pass info to a command (in order to give the push notification some content so I know what's up)

In the middle of everything, I managed to fuck up exim system-wide, so mails didn't work, which was fucking great of course...

The magic receipt is this:
:0 c
| ${NOTIFY} -t "Pi mail: $SUBJECT"

Anyway, this is the result (using a test mail by mdadm + an actual degraded array I am still waiting on replacement drives for):

A coworker told me this a little while ago and I cringed.

"Coworker installs windows partition o n a Mac, not sure what utility he used but he's handled every IT issue, people in our company for years but googling and researching ways to do things.

Steve comes along to do a service on the Macs (apparently) and sees what my coworker did and says "get rid of that it's a security risk", coworker had a legitimate reason to use Windows, plugin for Excel only works in Windows, so Steve could have totally done checks to ensure security wasn't a risk, but he's a Mac elitist, what can you do :/, lucky coworker though gets to use a windows PC and never looked back xD."

Honestly scared of Steve doing that so called service seeing I have tons of things I need to use (source tree, Android studio, some tools to test push notifications) and just down right deleting them because of his reasons, that and the whole he does services after hours without much warning (last time it was a leave password on desk for the next "week" and Steve will come in and fix the Macs) I can't defend my argument of why I use something like Android studio (to develop the app for the company LOL)

Setup git push notifications (to each of their own channels), together with automatic deployment via webhook, though I'll add notifications to that too, as it currently doesn't have any besides the log file.

Gitea really has been a blast for me to finally get all things git - done, maybe because it is just so lightweight.

holy shit i have push notifications on devrant now. this is new

I really don't understand how developers from Facebook, WhatsApp and other messaging platforms still didn't figure out that ever since they introduced message previews on push notifications that those "seen" check-marks became utterly useless in most of cases..

This COVID-19 quarantine just confirms it, since nobody is doing anything else except being on phones and computers whole day but somehow it still takes them several hours to "read" the message..

Marketing sends an average of 3 newsletter per week all year round, and 4-5 per week on Christmas.
Mailchimp makes this so damn easy for them...

We have ~500.000 subscribed customers.

They discovered the new chrome push notifications API and I 'refused' to build anything for it because I already find the amount of email they send unacceptable and I am pretty sure they would abuse of it.
I'm already imagining like 10 push messages a day...

Am I wrong? What would you do?

FUCK FIREBASE, FUCK CLOUD MESSAGING, FUCK GOOGLE, FUCK APPLE, FUCK PUSH NOTIFICATIONS, FUCK PROGRAMMING AND FUCK MY LIFE. JUST TELL ME MOTHERFUCKERS WHY NOTIFICATIONS IS NOT WORKING ANYMORE, I SWEAR I DIDN'T CHANGE A SINGLE LINE OF THE FUCKING CODE. AND IT'S BEEN ONLY ONE WEEK SINCE THE LAST TIME I TESTED IT.

I am a Full-Stack Developer and recently had a talk with my boss about how the push notifications work and he is pretty convinced that it has something to do with the IMEI number of the phone, he being a person with a non technical background makes it even more difficult for me to explain stuff to him :/

@dfox Would you make it possible to cluster push notifications that occur on the same post? When I receive a lot of notifs at once it clogs up my notification center.

Additionally would it be possible so that I can completely turn off seeing certain types of notifs even in the app not just for push notifications (from what I gather that is the only thing I have control over)

Just flashed a clean marshmallow kdz on my phone, finally running smooth after months of me raging at my phone. Hopefully I will start getting devRant push notifications now!

Little story, about how i get things fucked up.
I've been working for two nights on some project, and we have notifications in slack about new commits, and i've been working for myself, not pulling any commits for this time, cause no notifications 've been received, and then when i've tried to commit&push i've realized that there is 14 commits before me, and someone just accidentally turned off notifications :C

Dear Apple,

You suck at push notifications. Please allow Google to do its good job (Firebase) without going through your servers.

Fuckingly pissed,
A programmer

I used to be a sysadmin and to some extent I still am. But I absolutely fucking hated the software I had to work with, despite server software having a focus on stability and rigid testing instead of new features *cough* bugs.

After ranting about the "do I really have to do everything myself?!" for long enough, I went ahead and did it. Problem is, the list of stuff to do is years upon years long. Off the top of my head, there's this Android application called DAVx5. It's a CalDAV / CardDAV client. Both of those are extensions to WebDAV which in turn is an extension of HTTP. Should be simple enough. Should be! I paid for that godforsaken piece of software, but don't you dare to delete a calendar entry. Don't you dare to update it in one place and expect it to push that change to another device. And despite "server errors" (the client is fucked, face it you piece of trash app!), just keep on trying, trying and trying some more. Error handling be damned! Notifications be damned! One week that piece of shit lasted for, on 2 Android phones. The Radicale server, that's still running. Both phones however are now out of sync and both of them are complaining about "400 I fucked up my request".

Now that is just a simple example. CalDAV and CardDAV are not complicated protocols. In fact you'd be surprised how easy most protocols are. SMTP email? That's 4 commands and spammers still fuck it up. HTTP GET? That's just 1 command. You may have to do it a few times over to request all the JavaScript shit, but still. None of this is hard. Why do people still keep fucking it up? Is reading a fucking RFC when you're implementing a goddamn protocol so damn hard? Correctness be damned, just like the memory? If you're one of those people, kill yourself.

So yeah. I started writing my own implementations out of pure spite. Because I hated the industry so fucking much. And surprisingly, my software does tend to be lightweight and usually reasonably stable. I wonder why! Maybe it's because I care. Maybe people should care more often about their trade, rather than those filthy 6 figures. There's a reason why you're being paid that much. Writing a steaming pile of dogshit shouldn't be one of them.

- delete all social network apps
- turn off push notifications of EVERYTHING
- open IntelliJ in full screen mode
- play jazz with very low volume

Short angry rant
What the fuck is wrong with the SalesForce Authenticator logic?! How in the hell do you fuck up a simple 2FA system this hard?!!

Login -> Waiting for Notification... nothing... -> Reload Page -> Login -> Waiting for Notification... nothing -> Click "Use Code instead"... nothing happens... -> Reload Page -> "Login -> don't even wait for notification and just pres "Use Code instead"... nothing -> Reload Page -> Notice there's a "Use Code" button on this page as well -> Finally be able to log into the fucking Aloha piece of shit...

How TF is it, that Duo is able to send me a push notification within 1 second and it ALWAYS works... and THIS FUCKING SHIT NEVER FUCKING WORKS THE FIRST TIME AND AT WORST JUST DOESN'T WORK AT ALL!!!!!

Fucking hell.... Don't offer me a push notification service if you don't know how to make one... jesus fucking christ... All of Salesforce security is fucking stupid, but at least the others mostly work, but this retarded piece of crap is making me actively surprised when it works on first try... Maybe it's because I'm on a slow connection, but again Duo Mobile doesn't have this problem and works *instantly*... so what sort of retarded monkey coded the SF one I don't know, but I hope they are making better products now, because this is a disgrace to programming and security

Rant/collab proposal
The sheer fucking amount of popups on websites that ask this really pisses me off.

"Do you want out pathetic, groveling push notifications"

Option 1: Fuck yes, spam me right now!

Option 2: Later, because who can resist our spam

I propose a chrome addon that replaces the second option on every notification request popup, which is usually "Later" with "Fuck off"

TL;DR; do your best all you like, strive to be the #1 if you want to, but do not expect to be appreciated for walking an extra mile of excellence. You can get burned for that.

They say verbalising it makes it less painful. So I guess I'll try to do just that. Because it still hurts, even though it happened many years ago.

I was about to finish college. As usual, the last year we have to prepare a project and demonstrate it at the end of the year. I worked. I worked hard. Many sleepless nights, many nerves burned. I was making an android app - StudentBuddy. It was supposed to alleviate students' organizational problems: finding the right building (city plans, maps, bus schedules and options/suggestions), the right auditorium (I used pictures of building evac plans with classes indexed on them; drawing the red line as the path to go to find the right room), having the schedule in-app, notifications, push-notifications (e.g. teacher posts "will be 15 minutes late" or "15:30 moved to aud. 326"), homework, etc. Looots of info, loooots of features. Definitely lots of time spent and heaps of new info learned along the way.

The architecture was simple. It was a server-side REST webapp and an Android app as a client. Plenty of entities, as the system had to cover a broad spectrum of features. Consequently, I had to spin up a large number of webmethods, implement them, write clients for them and keep them in-sync. Eventually, I decided to build an annotation processor that generates webmethods and clients automatically - I just had to write a template and define what I want generated. That worked PERFECTLY.

In the end, I spun up and implemented hundreds of webmethods. Most of them were used in the Android app (client) - to access and upsert entities, transition states, etc. Some of them I left as TBD for the future - for when the app gets the ADMIN module created. I still used those webmethods to populate the DB.

The day came when I had to demonstrate my creation. As always, there was a commission: some high-level folks from the college, some guests from businesses.

My turn to speak. Everything went great, as reversed. I present the problem, demonstrate the app, demonstrate the notifications, plans, etc. Then I describe at high level what the implementation is like and future development plans. They ask me questions - I answer them all.

I was sure I was going to get a 10 - the highest score. This was by far the most advanced project of all presented that day!

Other people do their demos. I wait to the end patiently to hear the results. Commission leaves the room. 10 minutes later someone comes in and calls my name. She walks me to the room where the judgement is made. Uh-oh, what could've possibly gone wrong...?

The leader is reading through my project's docs and I don't like the look on his face. He opens the last 7 pages where all the webmethods are listed, points them to me and asks:
LEAD: What is this??? Are all of these implemented? Are they all being used in the app?
ME: Yes, I have implemented all of them. Most of them are used in the app, others are there for future development - for when the ADMIN module is created
LEAD: But why are there so many of them? You can't possibly need them all!
ME: The scope of the application is huge. There are lots of entities, and more than half of the methods are but extended CRUD calls
LEAD: But there are so many of them! And you say you are not using them in your app
ME: Yes, I was using them manually to perform admin tasks, like creating all the entities with all the relations in order to populate the DB (FTR: it was perfectly OK to not have the app completed 100%. We were encouraged to build an MVP and have plans for future development)
LEAD: <shakes his head in disapproval>
LEAD: Okay, That will be all. you can return to the auditorium

In the end, I was not given the highest score, while some other, less advanced projects, were. I was so upset and confused I could not force myself to ask WHY.

I still carry this sore with me and it still hurts to remember. Also, I have learned a painful life lesson: do your best all you like, strive to be the #1 if you want to, but do not expect to be appreciated for walking an extra mile of excellence. You can get burned for that.

So friend is making this key-value app with Thunkable for people with dementia. We're just unlocking our bikes when he wonders "what if they forget they installed the app?".

I suggest push notifications but cos he's using Thunkable FREE he'd have to pay £200 for that.

So he says he'd "F*CKING SPAM THEM WITH EMAILS" instead!

ps his APK is 30MB

You know what? FUCK Australian employers. I know they'd be damn fucking lucky to have me on their team.

I just finished working on something that I made several years ago (what I raised funds for in my previous rant), I then took it a step further and automated the process [if some things], and now I have my own software finding me new leads and sending them to me via email and push notifications.

With a little bit of tweaking maybe, and a little bit of time, I expect to find some new clients again.

Ok so, why not. Let us send a bunch of sms tests, they are cheaper than push notifications, right?

Managers told my fellow droid dev, to use push notifications to have a multiplayer game possible. And he was proud of his solution.

I think the mobile app for devRant should have push notifications.

fucking flutter.

i'm trying to make a simple app. it would be an easier to do both natively.
for fucks sake flutter, add some functionality. flutter recently got out of beta but it's not fucking done. no native webviews, no native push notifications. fuck that.

however, i do have to give credit where credit is due. coming into flutter i expected a different feel of the app on iphone and android. it was exactly the same, and it was smooth too. in that respect, i love flutter.

also guys, i have an app (not finished yet) i built with flutter and i would like some constructive criticism for changing the ui. only android right now though, i can't afford ios.

dictive.app/download

For all the cheap-ass sys admins:
I wouldn’t pay 100$ a year to apple just to have push notifications when my server fucks up or an user fill my support form but I want to know that in real time but I have iPhone(forget about FCM).

So I downloaded pushbullet to my phone and integrated its API in my server and when something important happen I get completely free notification which (thanks to url schemes in ios) redirect me to my server administration app.

Note: I used xamarin for my management app to be ready for the moment when I switch back to android.

FML. I JUST realized devRant can push notifications. I don't have to open the app every ten minutes now. 🤖

One Thing drives me crazy: Handling Android Push Notifications without Google (Firebase)

@dfox Wouldn't it be better if there were limited amount of push notifications if user haven't seen the previous ones yet? I commented on some popular rant and when I got to a stable connection, the phone vibrated like crazy for at least 15s :D It was awesome btw.

Working for a startup building a device / app that let you answer your landline phone on your mobile, and get notifications of missed calls etc.

While developing I purposely didn't secure the endpoint that controlled push notifications.

I waited for the boss to sign up, went to the DB and stole his token. From time to time i'd send a request telling him he missed a call from his wife or son.

... then kicked back and watched the madness and frustration ensue.

So, I turned on my old phone to transfer all my p̶o̶r̶n̶ photos, and it crashed from the notifications.

And I understand that it's an underpowered device and notifications aren't expected to come by the hundreds, but how terribly misdesigned must a pubsub system like Push be for the client to crash?

Its time to remind ourselves the wonderful time of the year, where people look back and decide to be better and learn from your mistakes...

For example never test in prod and wake me up with notifications you dumbfucks... Someone has exams to do..

Seriously, I have seen a lot of push notifications lately, its some kind of Letstestinprod-uary?

So I was looking into phone app development again (as you do) and I'm working on a simple QoL app for me and my SO that will help us automate some home management and finances stuff. Naturally I delved down the rabbit hole deep and wanted to have push notifications so we don't have to check the app periodically to know when certain things happen... Oh boy... Why is mobile development so convoluted, especially if you don't want to rely on Google Services...

It seems that the most accepted way of doing this is Firebase (FCM). Well me being me, I refuse to use google services for this and I prefer self hosted solutions (for data privacy reasons) which eliminates most products out there.

It also didn't help that my framework of choice is Flutter/Dart, because fuck Android Studio and the insane buggy XML stuff and fuck Android and it's constantly changing APIs...

Well In the end I decided on a rather simple solution and self hosted an AMQP service (RabbitMQ in my case, as I have some experience with it already) and implemented a foreground service in android platform specific code on top of my flutter project to kickstart it and made my phone a queue listener... This now means I can push notifications from my server to the Messaging Queue and it will be pushed into my App automatically!

One thing I found out on this journey was that Android now kills most background services and enforces foreground services to have a visible notification in the status drawer... which I actually approve of. It's a bit annoying that you can start a reliable background service, but I'm absolutely on-board with long running processes started by my apps are constantly visible...

Long story short, I love reinventing all the wheels, especially if it's for free and private... And I also went to sleep at 2AM again because this took longer that I'd like to tune... but it works, and it's google free...

I'm thinking of trying to package this up as a flutter module later, but first I want to do testing on battery life and the general life cycle of the service. RabbitMQ says they have the client library optimized for long-lasting connections and it should be just using a tcp socket, which should pretty much be what all the push notification services are doing anyway. I'm also not completely satisfied with how the permanent notification looks.. it isn't collapsible like some of the other ones from other apps and it's about 2 lines high instead of single line... which is something quite annoying and I'm struggling to find any relevant docs on how this is done other than possible making a custom Notification Style... but I just can't believe that everyone is doing that.. there must be a built-in somewhere -_-... Ugh Android is hell...

Anyway, if any android devs here have some hints, tips and tricks on how to handle this type of background/foreground process stuff and I'm doing something wrong let me know, cause googling this shit is a nightmare too!

“Netflix lowers quality on all content for a month - to prohibit internet from crashing, according to Variety”
- push notifications from Swedish newspaper.
I doubt that Netflix could cause the internet to crash...

push notifications are a bitch to setup and test. every single time

Oh!! Got succeed sending Push Notifications using Firebase cloud base messaging(FCM) after struggling a lot with
Google Cloud Messaging(GCM). Thank you Google,devrant. The reason for my excitement is i am an Electronics engineer and new to android.

Did anyone else notice a sudden drop in battery backup after devRant update with push notifs?
I have muted the notifs, but I guess the app still makes the calls to show notifications, but why would that take so much battery.
PS. : I haven't installed any other apps in the past few days.

Question: which is better approach?

1. Use push notifications to tell react website that new data is available

OR

2. Use SignalR (similar to socket.io) and push data in real time?

The down side of SignalR is server needs to map connections --> use more memory while push notifications doesn't require that

tried fixing push notifications in an app I'm working on, only to find out at the end of the day that Apple's sandbox was down all day..

What a waste of my day

* Left leave work a bit earlier, because I had driving lessons.
* Finished the issues I was working on and headed straight for to the school.
* Checks notifications
Coworker on that Merge Request I labled as ready: Did you forget to push?

I'm so sorry for being such a bad person 😅😭
At least it's nothing of priority 😔

Looking to write a mobile application targeting both iOS and Android. It will be fairly basic (most complicated functions will be push notifications, asynchronous JSON fetching). I am fairly proficient at both Swift and iOS as well as JavaScript web development (react) but have never tried react native. Any thoughts on React Native vs Native Swift / Java?

Any native app devs know if this is possible, before I go away and start messing about with shit.

I want to build a companion native app to my web app for the sole purpose of receiving in app push notifications.

So you set all the shit up on the web app and then the native app is just to get push messages. I currently send sms messages with the Twilio API but would rather the app solution.

So umm.. the "Update on new rants" notif is turned off in the settings, but i'm still getting the push notifications. Does this happen to anyone else? Is this worth opening an issue on gh?

Why I'm getting no push notifications?

If I login to some account, log out, and then log in through some other account, I still get push notifications for logged out account.

It doesn't unregister device for push notifications, you need to uninstall to get rid of it.

I complain WAY too much about the free APIs I use, than I probably should. (sorry OneSignal Support 😔).

Developing a News app in android and kinda struck at the point where a new news is added to the server and then to be notified to all users.. I mean I want to know how to correctly implement push notifications and will I need an XMPP server for that ? If so ,then which one do all you experienced devs suggest..?
Thanks.. #awesomeCommunity

So, is it possible to disable push notifications for when someone comments on a rant you commented on by default?

# bug
There seem to be some push notification weirdness with my device.
push notifications are shown like couple of hours after I've seen them in Notifs. up to like 6-7 hours.
anybody else?

Urghh

I swear web push notifications are the betaest most betty beta thing

Half of the time they don't work and misbehave without trail

Desktop PUSH Notification requests are fucking stupid! I get that you’re all edgy and shit and made your stupid site into a PWA or are just trying to spam me with this amazing new access you’ve been granted over the last few years.... But fucking stop it.

If you have a PWA and a user is viewing you on desktop clearrrllyyyy they’re not mobile and your request is pointless. Log the access as 1 of the 3 they need before being allowed to install it as an icon and ONLY on mobile request push as part of the install. Maybe just maybe it’s ok if they’re mobile browsing...

Use your fucking heads people. Just because you can use something doesn’t mean you should.

Web Push notifications for PWA finally coming to iOS 2023
API is already there at experimental features settings

Mark: hey guys I wanted to connect with you all (on FB) and have a quick chat before the meeting.

Cook, Pichai, Bezos: ok, mhhm... what's up?

Mark: yes so I think we gonna be in for a grilling so want make sure we minimize the damage.

All: uhhm....

Mark: I'm suggesting we agree on the order which we join the webex so we don't look bad..

Pichai, Cook: I don't get it...
Bezos: ... oh I think I get it.... you mean appearing as FAAG?

Cook: hmm..
Pichai: what's that?
Mark: not important but anyway... The solution is simple.
Bezos: yes Sundar just login first and I guess can send us all push notifications to our phones.

Pichai: hm... Ok... Wouldn't this get us in trouble though.... This sounds like collusion...

Mark: ok guys... Uh let's just end it here then... This chat Never happened...

Auto-healing deployments are great until your deployment fails because it can't handle sending a large number of push notifications (triggered by a message on a pub/sub topic that starts being read from on startup)...so restarts, tries to send them again, fails, restarts, etc...and meanwhile a few tens of thousands of users are getting spammed by notifications 😱

Had to reinstall Gmail on my phone... Settings lost, it defaulted to push notifications for all messages.

Someone broke a per-page analytics call.

1,300 Sentry warning emails in an hour later, I'm finally annoyed enough to do something about it, but the settings UI is horrible. 😥

Anyone here that randomly received a chrome push notification from some random website (I don't even know the website)?

I know I can block the website but I didn't allow it in the first place.

Why am I no longer getting push notifications from Devrant? I really miss those.

Having to open the app to check for notifications is not as rewarding.

And yes, I have them enabled in the settings 🙁

!rant
Is there any way to enable push notifications?

Joined a hackathon for an app which requires a server to help parse a few things and send push notifications. Looked up Google push notifications and it seemed decent so I just bookmarked it and left it there for reference during the hackathon. Biiigggg mistake. No idea how to implement the server, couldn't find a tutorial that explains enough for a newbie like me and the Google site didn't help much either. Welp. Google cloud messaging. Never gonna like those words ever.

Devs can a Webhook be implemented in Android.? What I want is to observe a URL on which the back end might send multiple POSTs for a while...
I suggested them that we can use Push Notifications instead of Webhook but the back end devs won't listen...

When your weekend starts with: ahh just gonna chill and test my apps background-fetch mode and realizing it dont work with async requests and silent push-notifications, spending the weekend adding syncronious requests for silent push. Why does apple hate developers??

Not a horror. I'm rewriting services.

It started as a help request. I was asked to help with completing a service dealing with push notifications which was a research prototype. It was suggested to keep core part of it, but it was so awful that I just removed all files and wrote the service from scratch.

The second service had been developed for more than a year by a junior and then by our manager who wanted to complete it as fast as possible, without taking care of code quality. Then I was asked to take over the project and after some time I agreed with one condition: I'll have 1 month on takeover. But when I looked at the code, it became clear that it's much faster and better to rewrite everything except API and database than to takeover existing code.

The third service dealing with file exchange was working, but the junior who wrote it advised to rewrite it because it was a very simple service. So, I initiated rewriting, designed a new API and reviewed the final result.

And now I'm dealing with the fourth one. It was developed in my team but not under control. Now, when I "inherited" this complicated project, I decided to rewrite it because it should be simple, but it doesn't. It features reflection, layers inside layers, strange namespaces, strange solution structure. And that's after months of refactorings and improvements. So, wish me luck because I want to keep part of the infrastructure, but I don't know if it's possible.

What service do you need set for push notifications?

Question!

Where do you guys get your daily news about Tech, IT, Dev Related things?
I want something with push notifications and just serious sources without bullshit infos.

Even though I mute push notifications for any post I still get notifications of comment on that post

I'm sending push notifications. Do you want one? Say yes say yes!

Guys, so I researched a lot about this but couldn't reach a conclusion. How does chat app work on Android?
I mean you could use XMPP, SSE or socket. But how long is the connection kept open? And what's is the data flow chart from db to push notifications (FCM) to device?

@dfox I am not getting push notifications on my new oneplus 3t.... What to do?
I used android migrate feature to auto login apps from my last phone...

Turn off phone notifications in push bullet

Headphones

Facebook Pages Manager Android app is not working properly. I am not receiving push notifications when people contact me via page inbox. Already tried everything I could think of: disabling battery saving for pages manager app, making sure notifications are all checked in facebook page settings and etc. Any idea how to fix this?

Good morning guys. I am developing a vue project and want to implement push notifications.

The problem: I have never had programmed push notifications before.

What is your favorite device for this and why?