Can you use Push without Backend Users

[David]

I am developing a hybrid app using appbuilder which connects through our custom API to interact with legacy users and related data.

Am I able to register a device for Push Notifications through Back End Services without being required to setup a User in Back End Services? 

If possible I would prefer to populate the Push registration with my legacy user membership GUID as the UserId or store it in the custom object.

If this is not possible, do you have any suggested logic/workflow to keep my legacy user database in sync with the Back End Services Users?  We anticipate it is a small subset of users that will be using the app and Push Notifications.  We will send the actual push notifications through C# .Net server side API calls to Backend for individuals with custom message content.

Thanks in advance for your prompt replies.

[David]

I modified the sample app Advanced Push Notifications and was able to register device without being a BackEnd services user.  And I was able to test sending a push notification using the back end push browser to segment the user by the custom parameter object.

Hope this helps some other newbie.

[Anton Dobrev]

Hi David,

Thanks for posting to the Telerik Developer Forums.

Indeed, you can use the Push Notifications services in Telerik Platform without the integrated user management. Yet, you can register the devices with custom parameters and target your audience based on them.

Here are some resources:

- Basic Push Sample app
- Getting Started article
- Targeting Push Notifications
- Sending Push Notifications with .NET

I hope that this helps.

Regards,
Anton Dobrev
Telerik

 

 

[PC]

Hi,

I understand how convenient to use Telerik Backend service to fulfill my push notification to Android and IOS platform. I like to use "Telerik Push Notifications Plugin", but Telerik Backend is not part of my option due to specific requirement by my client.

Can you lead to any Push Notification examples which using FCM and APNS directly without using Telerik Backend Service? My client have solid requirements not to use Telerik Backend. 

Thank you very much.

[Martin]

Hi,

The Telerik Push Notifications plugin is based on the Phonegap Push Plugin. It is modified so that it can be easily integrated with Telerik Backend Services and its push notification management services.

If you do not want to use Telerik Backend Services push notifications it would be easier to use another push notification plugin like Phonegap Push Plugin which is not tied to the backend services used. If you are using Telerik Platform for building a Hybrid app, you may add the Phonegap Push plugin as a custom plugin to your project. 

From then on, the general steps to follow would be:

1. Register device for push notification and retrieve push token - you would need the Push plugin for that (as noted above, it would be easier to user Phonegap Push plugin in your case). I would suggest to review the plugin's documentation. There are also multiple tutorials on the web for setting up push notifications with Phonegap push plugin like this and this, but I am not aware of a ready made sample, similar to this one in Telerik Backend services.
2. Store registered devices and their push tokens - you would use your own server to store the information about registered devices for push notifications with your app and also their push tokens, which would be required to send targeted push notifications to devices through FCM/APNS APIs.
3. Send push notification messages - using FCM / APNS APIs.

If possible, could you please share some more details on why the customer would strictly not want to use Telerik backend services? It would be beneficial for us to know if there is something we can improve in our product to make it better.

I hope this has helped

Regards,
Martin
Progress Telerik