iOS Components and Frameworks: Understanding the Advanced Features of the iOS SDK

Push Notification Server

Because the app is prepared to receive notifications, you can set up the server to send push notifications. You can send push notifications via the APNs from any type of server that can communicate over a secure TCP socket connection (an SSL stack is required). Apple requires that your server maintain a persistent connection while sending push notification requests to APNs to avoid the overhead of establishing connections. For our sample app, we will use a Ruby on Rails server since it is quick to set up, and there is a gem (or prebuilt module) available to automate communication with APNs.

Note

If you want more detail on communication with APNs, look at Apple’s documentation at https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/RemoteNotificationsPG/CommunicatingWIthAPS/CommunicatingWIthAPS.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008194-CH101-SW1. ...