For up-to-date product documentation, see the IBM MobileFirst Foundation Developer Center.

What's new in push notifications

With IBM MobileFirst™ Platform FoundationV8.0.0, the push notification service is provided as a stand-alone service hosted on a separate web application.

Earlier versions of IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation embedded the push notification service as part of the application runtime.

Programming model

The programming model spans across the server to client, and you need to set up your application for push notification service to work on your client applications. Two types of clients would interact with push notification service:

• Mobile client applications
• Back-end server applications

Security for push notification service

IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation authorization server enforces the OAuth protocol to secure push notification service.

For more information, see Security for push notification clients.

Push notification service model

With IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation V8.0.0, the event source-based model is not supported. The push notification capability is enabled on IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation by the push service model.

Push REST API

We can enable back-end server applications that are deployed outside MobileFirst Server to access push notification functions by using REST API for push in the IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation runtime. For information on using REST API for push notification, see REST API for the MobileFirst Server push service.

Upgrading from existing event source-based notification model

With the IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation V8.0.0, the event source-based model is not supported. The push notification capability is enabled entirely by the push service model. All existing event source-based applications need to be migrated to the new push service model. For information on migrating your push notifications, see Migrating to push notifications from event source-based notifications.

Sending push notifications

We can choose to send an event-source based, tag-based, or broadcast-enabled push notification from the server.

Push notifications can be sent by using the following methods:

• Using MobileFirst Operations Console, two types of notifications can be sent: tag and broadcast. See Sending push notification with the MobileFirst Operations Console.
• Using Push Message (POST) REST API, all forms of notifications can be sent: tag, broadcast, and authenticated.
• Using REST API for the MobileFirst Server administration service, all forms of notifications can be sent: tag, broadcast, and authenticated.

Sending SMS notifications

We can configure the push service to send a short message service (SMS) notification to user devices.

Refer Sending SMS notifications, for more information.

Installation of the push notification service

The push notification service is packaged as a MobileFirst Server component (MobileFirst Server push service). For more information about the architecture of MobileFirst Server, see MobileFirst Server overview.

To find out how to install the push service and other MobileFirst Server components, see Install MobileFirst Server for a production environment.

Push service model is supported on Windows Universal Platform apps

We can now migrate native Windows Universal Platform (UWP) applications to use the push service model to send push notifications.

Refer Native Windows Universal applications, for more information.

Parent topic: What's new in V8.0.0