apns

A Go package to interface with the Apple Push Notification Service

Features

This library implements a few features that we couldn't find in any one library elsewhere:

• Long Lived Clients - Apple's documentation say that you should hold a persistent connection open and not create new connections for every payload
• Use of New Protocol - Apple came out with v2 of their API with support for variable length payloads. This library uses that protocol.
• Robust Send Guarantees - APNS has asynchronous feedback on whether a push sent. That means that if you send pushes after a bad send, those pushes will be lost forever. Our library records the last N pushes, detects errors, and is able to resend the pushes that could have been lost. More reading

API Compatibility

The apns package may undergo breaking changes. A tool like godep is recommended to vendor the current release.

Install

go get github.com/timehop/apns

Checkout the develop branch for the current work in progress.

Usage

Sending a push notification (basic)

c, _ := apns.NewClient(apns.ProductionGateway, apnsCert, apnsKey)

p := apns.NewPayload()
p.APS.Alert.Body = "I am a push notification!"
p.APS.Badge.Set(5)
p.APS.Sound = "turn_down_for_what.aiff"

m := apns.NewNotification()
m.Payload = p
m.DeviceToken = "A_DEVICE_TOKEN"
m.Priority = apns.PriorityImmediate

c.Send(m)

Sending a push notification with error handling

c, err := apns.NewClient(apns.ProductionGateway, apnsCert, apnsKey)
if err != nil {
	log.Fatal("could not create new client", err.Error()
}

go func() {
	for f := range c.FailedNotifs {
		fmt.Println("Notif", f.Notif.ID, "failed with", f.Err.Error())
	}
}()

p := apns.NewPayload()
p.APS.Alert.Body = "I am a push notification!"
p.APS.Badge.Set(5)
p.APS.Sound = "turn_down_for_what.aiff"
p.APS.ContentAvailable = 1

p.SetCustomValue("link", "zombo://dot/com")
p.SetCustomValue("game", map[string]int{"score": 234})

m := apns.NewNotification()
m.Payload = p
m.DeviceToken = "A_DEVICE_TOKEN"
m.Priority = apns.PriorityImmediate
m.Identifier = 12312, // Integer for APNS
m.ID = "user_id:timestamp", // ID not sent to Apple – to identify error notifications

c.Send(m)

Retrieving feedback

f, err := apns.NewFeedback(s.Address(), DummyCert, DummyKey)
if err != nil {
	log.Fatal("Could not create feedback", err.Error())
}

for ft := range f.Receive() {
	fmt.Println("Feedback for token:", ft.DeviceToken)
}

Note that the channel returned from Receive will close after the feedback service has no more data to send.

Running the tests

We use Ginkgo for our testing framework and Gomega for our matchers. To run the tests:

go get github.com/onsi/ginkgo/ginkgo
go get github.com/onsi/gomega
ginkgo -randomizeAllSpecs

Contributing

• Fork the repo (Recommended process)
• Make your changes
• Run the tests
• Submit a pull request

License

MIT License