Question

I would like to add Push messaging to my Phonegap Android App and believe that C2DM is the waybest way to make this work – could point me in the right direction to set this up?
Is there a plugin or tutorial to help with this?

Also – do I actually need a plugin – is it possible to add C2dm to my app the traditional Android way without messing up my phonegap setup?

Answer 1

Yes, C2DM is the Android Push solution. On https://github.com/awysocki/C2DM-PhoneGap you can find an example implementation.

The files in the com.google namespace have to be included unchanged, they are from the session “Google IO Session Overview: Android + App Engine: A Developer’s Dream Combination”, see http://bradabrams.com/2011/05/google-io-session-overview-android-app-engine-a-developers-dream-combination/

So these are the steps you should perform:

1. Add the 3 com.google classes to your project
2. Create a class called C2DMReceiver (naming convention) which inherits from C2DMBaseReceiver and implement the necessary abstract events
3. Set up the AndroidManifest.xml

The AndroidManifest looks like

<!-- set up an own permission to secure our C2DM mesages -->
<permission android:name="your.namespace.permission.C2D_MESSAGE"
            android:protectionLevel="signature" />

<!-- List of permission -->
<uses-permission android:name="your.namespace.permission.C2D_MESSAGE" />
<uses-permission android:name="com.google.android.c2dm.permission.RECEIVE" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WAKE_LOCK" />

<application ..>

    <!-- Your implementation of the class C2DMReceiver, base class is Googles C2DMBaseReceiver -->
    <service android:name=".C2DMReceiver" />

    <!-- Googles broadcast receiver, it delegates to your.namespace.C2DMReceiver -->
    <receiver
            android:name="com.google.android.c2dm.C2DMBroadcastReceiver"
            android:permission="com.google.android.c2dm.permission.SEND">
        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="com.google.android.c2dm.intent.RECEIVE" />
            <category android:name="your.namespace" />
        </intent-filter>
        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="com.google.android.c2dm.intent.REGISTRATION" />
            <category android:name="your.namespace" />
        </intent-filter>
    </receiver>
</application>

If you receive on the emulator the error “E/CSE Notifications(401): Registration error ACCOUNT_MISSING”, you have to add a Google account to your emulator.

For your second question: it depends what you want to do. When you receive the message and you just want to display a notification so that the user is able to start your app then you don’t need a Phonegap plugin. In that case you can solve everything in java.