notification | Nick Harris .NET

I blogged previously on how to make your Push Notification implementation more efficient.� In this post I will detail an alternative to Push, that is Periodic Notifications, which is are a poll based solution for updating your live Tiles and Badge content (Note that it can’t be used for Toast or Raw). It turns out if your app scenario can deal with only receiving notifications every thirty minutes or more that this is a much easier way for you to update your tiles.� All you need to do is configure you app for periodic notifications, and point it at a service API that will return the appropriate XML template for the badge or tile update in your app whether you are using WCF, Web API or others this is quite an easy thing to achieve.� In this case I will demonstrate how you can implement this using Mobile Services.

Let�s start with the backend service by creating a Custom API.� To do this all you need to do is select the API tab in the Mobile Services portal.

�Next provide a name for your endpoint and set the permissions for get to everyone

Next define the return XML return payload for your custom API.� You can see examples of each different Tile templates here

exports.get = function(request, response) {
    // Use "request.service" to access features of your mobile service, e.g.:
    //   var tables = request.service.tables;
    //   var push = request.service.push;
 
    response.send(200, ''+
                            ''+
                                ''+
                                    ''+
                                    '@ntotten enjoying himself a little too much '+
                                ''+
                            ''+
                        '');
};

Note:

If you are supporting multiple tile sizes you should sending the whole payload in for each of the varying tile sizes
This is just an example ? – you really should be providing dynamic content here rather than the same tile template every time

Next configure you�re app to point at your Custom API through the package.appxmanifest