Push Notification in Android?

Question

Is it possible to create a Push Notification in Android? What I exactly want is whenever I have something to say to the users of my Application, I want some Alert Dialog to pop out "only" if I have something to say like "The new update is now available in the market, please update your application". Can someone guide me with this?

Solution 1

There's the Android Cloud to Device Messaging framework (C2DM). It requires Android 2.2 or greater. If you require something that works with prior versions, Urban Airship has something that may suit your needs. I have used neither, so I can't say whether they are any good or not.

Edit:

Important: C2DM has been officially deprecated as of June 26, 2012. This means that C2DM has stopped accepting new users and quota requests. No new features will be added to C2DM. However, apps using C2DM will continue to work. Existing C2DM developers are encouraged to migrate to the new version of C2DM, called Google Cloud Messaging for Android (GCM).

Solution 2

You can use this help

Solution 3

Standard way to show notifications in Android are Status Bar Notifications.

If you need to push notification from the server to devices you might want to take a look at Cloud to Device Messaging.

Solution 4

I once had a play with this project, when I was creating an application with a similar requirement (I needed to receive status updates from a remote hardware device):

http://tokudu.com/2010/how-to-implement-push-notifications-for-android/

There's a Stackoverflow topic about it here:

Push Notifications in Android Platform

The other possible answer is Google's own Android Cloud framework but I don't know the present status of this.

Solution 5

Many users will be turned off by your app popping up push notifications while it isn't running. The Android market and Amazon market handle update notifications for you, so unless you are using alternative distribution means, this may not be needed.

An alternative, less intrusive way is to have your app check for updates when it's actually run.

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Comments

[Lorne Laliberte]

C2DM has been replaced by the Google Cloud Messaging framework (GCM) which is vastly superior to C2DM: for example there are no more quotas, it is extremely efficient and very, very fast. You will need to create a third party server or use a service such as AirBop to track device registration ids and handle things like splitting your push requests into batches of 1000.