How push notifications work

Push notifications work as follows:

Why do you need to know this?

You need to be aware that there are three components behind a push notification. The device and the push notification server are obvious, but the web service that acts as a register of interested devices is probably not so clear. You could create a web service to do this and there is code out there to guide you, or you could use a third party service. Two popular services for Titanium are Urban Airship and Titanium's own cloud-based push service. We will explore solutions for both of these services in this chapter.

This chapter could include solutions for StackMob and Parse but the implementation of these services is so similar to that for ACS that it would be a waste of space. It should be noted that Parse has excellent documentation that makes implementation far easier.