Question

What is the best way to send push notifications through Urban AirShip using a Rails 3 web app?

From Urban Airship documentation:

An HTTP POST to /api/push/broadcast/
sends the given notification to all
registered device tokens for the
application. The payload is in JSON
with content-type application/json,
with this structure:

{
    "aps": {
         "badge": 15,
         "alert": "Hello from Urban Airship!",
         "sound": "cat.caf"
    },
    "exclude_tokens": [
        "device token you want to skip",
        "another device token you want to skip"
    ]
}

I really don’t know where to start!

Answer 1

Better way is to use UrbanAirship Groupon version. Their docs specify every thing very clearly and it will much neater code. Worked and tested in my application.

From the read me file, (with some more comments and all):-

Note: if you are using Ruby 1.8, you should also install the system_timer gem for more reliable timeout behaviour. See http://ph7spot.com/musings/system-timer for more information. Baically

  gem install system_timer

Installation

 gem install urbanairship 
 # or specify in your gem file 
 gem "urbanairship"

Configuration define all this in initializes directory and then make sure u restart your application.

    Urbanairship.application_key = 'application-key'
    Urbanairship.application_secret = 'application-secret'
    Urbanairship.master_secret = 'master-secret'
    Urbanairship.logger = Rails.logger
    Urbanairship.request_timeout = 5 # default

Usage

Registering a device token

    Urbanairship.register_device 'DEVICE-TOKEN' # => true

Unregistering a device token

    Urbanairship.unregister_device 'DEVICE-TOKEN' # => true

Sending a push notification (for instant delivery remove schedule_for attribute)

    notification = {
      :schedule_for => 1.hour.from_now,
      :device_tokens => ['DEVICE-TOKEN-ONE', 'DEVICE-TOKEN-TWO'],
      :aps => {:alert => 'You have a new message!', :badge => 1}
    }

    Urbanairship.push notification # => true

Batching push notification sends (for instant delivery remove schedule_for attribute)

    notifications = [
      {
        :schedule_for => 1.hour.from_now,
        :device_tokens => ['DEVICE-TOKEN-ONE', 'DEVICE-TOKEN-TWO'],
        :aps => {:alert => 'You have a new message!', :badge => 1}
      },
      {
        :schedule_for => 3.hours.from_now,
        :device_tokens => ['DEVICE-TOKEN-THREE'],
        :aps => {:alert => 'You have a new message!', :badge => 1}
      }
    ]

        Urbanairship.batch_push notifications # => true

Sending broadcast notifications
Urbanairship allows you to send a broadcast notification to all active registered device tokens for your app.(for instant delivery remove schedule_for attribute)

    notification = {
      :schedule_for => 1.hour.from_now,
      :aps => {:alert => 'Important announcement!', :badge => 1}
    }

    Urbanairship.broadcast_push notification # => true