服务器可以在没有用户知晓的情况下通知iOS / Android应用程序有关更改吗？

Question

I am new in mobile development and I have a project to do and I spent the whole past days searching for solution to a problem until I got lost so I hope I can find the final answer here.

I have a server (php & MySQL DB) and developing a mobile app in iOS + Android that retrieve data from the server. The mobile app should take the data from the server in the first run and save it in the phone so whenever it run again it take the stored data.

The server should notify the app "without the user being aware" whenever a change made so that the app can go and update the data immediately.

I thought about using webservice (probably REST with RestKit) or applying sort of timestamps on the server records, which are all not the problem.

My problem is that I can't find a way to let the server itself notify the app about the changes whenever a change happen and allowing the app then to update the new data. I thought about using push notifications but - specially in iOS - it can't be hidden from the users.

So is there a possible way to do it? is it complex? does it worth? other suggestions?

As I said I am new so maybe my thinking wrong so sorry in that case, and I searched through the questions and couldn't figure out an answer for my question.

Answer 1

At least in iOS, a solution would be to use Apple Push Notifications. If you don't want to be intrusive and want it to be as transparent as possible, you can define what kind of "notifications" signals you want, like this:

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] registerForRemoteNotificationTypes:
         (UIRemoteNotificationTypeBadge | UIRemoteNotificationTypeSound | UIRemoteNotificationTypeAlert)];

As for the background process, I don't think you would be able to do that. Apple is very strict in what you can do in background (not background thread, but background as a working process while you are not in the application). What I would advise, would be using a notification badge, so the user would know that there is something new, and when he entered the application you could start your update.

---

I have to agree with Yase:

Why update the data if the user is not aware of it?.

You should always make it as user friendly as possible. Not letting your user know that the application might consume resources is bad, in my opinion. Imagine that you are updating 2mb of information and the user is on 3G...