I need to notify user when a certain condition is met but that condition might or might not meet in months. I need to run condition check in background (even when app terminates) so that I could detect condition is met (even if it happens after 3 months). If condition is met then I need to send notification only to a single user (not all users).
I am not sure what is the best way of doing it. Local Notification or Push Notification? I can not schedule a local notification in advance because I don’t know when it will meet the condition. I think Push notification is not needed because I am sending only one notification to only one user in several days/months.
I also need to constantly run this check in background. I know it can be run infinitely in background by using location update (significant monitoring or background navigation). But my condition checking code doesn’t actually require location updates. As far as I understand, Apple allows only location update or network related task in background (for few minutes). That's why I am thinking of putting my code in background location update code.
In my opinion , I should use local notification and put my code in background location update code so that I could check constantly if certain condition is met. This background check will schedule local notification and show it to the user who is using that device. I don’t think it is possible to schedule a push notification by code running in background.
In summary, I have following 3 questions
Should I put my code in background location update? If not, what is the right approach of running my code infinitely in background without location update?
Will Apple reject application if I put my code in background location update while location update code doesn’t actually send/receive current location?
What kind of notification should I use in this kind of situation where I send notification to a single user after months? Would you use Local Notification? or Push Notification.
Please reply. Any help is truly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
This is a bit of a tricky problem unfortunately.
Apple won't allow you to create long-running operations in the background. As you mentioned, you can add code in the background with location updates or audio, but neither of those are very good solutions since (1) Apple will likely reject you from the app store and (2) the user will probably close the app if they notice a big locations banner at the top of their phone (or a weird background audio signal), and closing the app will kill your operation. For any truly long-running tasks it's probably best to set up a server and run a cron job or equivalent long-running operation. It's the only way you can know that the task will continue running.
Sorry, I was just answering one at a time, but as I mentioned above, yes, they'll probably reject your code for that. As a rule of thumb: if you think the Apple-created code you're using wasn't meant for what you're using it for, Apple will probably reject your app.
It sounds like you should use a remote notification. If you do use a remote notification, you'll probably want some sort of backend anyway. You could use a local notification to notify a user after a few months, but you would need to know the exact time to send it up front, which it doesn't sound like you would.
In summary: Try to build a simple BE. Maybe use Firebase Functions or something, and also build an APNS system to send pushes. In the app, tell the server to start processing the information and send the push back when it's done. The situation sounds like a perfect use case for server-side logic.
Hope that helps!