Question

I’m testing out Windows Phone 7.5 push notifications. I have got the 3 different push types working fine (Toast, Tile and Raw) and am able to send messages from unit tests and a web application without any problems and receive them in my WP application. I want the ability to add extra properties to the push notification and the Raw push type does this perfectly for me and I can add custom key/value pairs or anything else to the push message and extract it on the phone app. I have just found out however that it only works if the application is running and my unit tests fail (suppressed notification status is received in unit test) when the phone application is not running (checked documentation which confirms this too). Is there anyway to add extra properties (key/values) to toast or tile messages or some way I can use raw in another way ? Toast notifications seem limited to a title property and an actual message property but I need to add additional data.

Just wondering if anyone had any suggestions / workarounds ?

Answer 1

The general practice I use is to initially send a raw notification to the device with phone-usable data embedded in the message. If my application is currently running then I can process the contents of the raw message and immediately make use of it on the phone. However if the application is not currently running on the phone you will receive notification from the push servers that the message could not be delievered. If I receive this response I send out a Toast / Tile notification.

With Toast notifications the only parametrisation you have access to is the URI that will launch the application. This is specified with the wp:param node of the message. Eg.

<wp:Notification xmlns:wp="WPNotification">
  <wp:Toast>
    <wp:Text1>Toast Title</wp:Text1>
    <wp:Text2>Toast sub title</wp:Text2>
    <wp:Param>/MainPage.xaml?LaunchedFrom=A%20Toast%20Notification</wp:Param>
  </wp:Toast>
</wp:Notification>

If the user taps on this toast notification your application will launch and navigate to MainPage.xaml. You can access the querystring passed in via the NavigationContext.QueryString.

Note: The wp:Param node can only be sent to Mango (and up) devices. Additionally the entire contents must be less than 256 characters or you’ll receive a PushErrorTypeMessageBadContent error. (Thanks to Ritch Melton for pointing this out). More info available from the Sending Push Notifications for Windows Phone page on MSDN.