Push Notifications by Tutorials, Third Edition, is Available Now!

Push notifications may seem simple and straightforward at first since almost everyone is familiar with them; however, knowing how and when to use them in practice can prove challenging.

With advancements in the latest iOS releases bringing advanced features, such as rich media notifications, notification actions, grouped notifications and more, you will quickly realize that you need a book to help you out.

Well, Push Notifications by Tutorials is that book — and we’ve updated it for its third edition!

Read on to see what’s inside Push Notifications by Tutorials, what we’ve updated, and how you can get your own copy!

About Push Notifications by Tutorials

Our push notifications tutorials have been some of our most popular from year to year, so we finally agreed that it made sense to write a book!

Learn about advanced features, such as rich media notifications, notification actions, grouped notifications and more!

Since push notifications is such a focused subject, this book is direct and to-the point; instead of wading through 300 pages of theory before getting down to business, the book gets the job done in just over 150 pages. It’s just the information you need, just when you need it.

By the end of this book, you’ll be a master of push notifications and well on your way to implementing them inside your own apps!

What’s Been Updated in the Book?

Things have changed quite a bit since we published the first edition of Push Notifications by Tutorials. New frameworks like SwiftUI, Combine and the introduction of iOS 14 keep you on your toes as a developer — and that’s why we’ve updated the book to reflect those changes!

In particular, here’s what’s new in the book:

• Updated to SwiftUI: To reflect the modern trend of UI development on iOS, we’ve updated all of the projects and examples in the book to use SwiftUI instead of UIKit.
• Integration of Combine: To help make some of the examples in the book more straightforward, we’ve used Combine underneath to let you focus on the important parts of push notifications.
• iOS 14 changes: iOS 14 brought some changes to the way that push notifications work, so we’ve updated the book to reflect this new behaviour.
• Bug fixes and improvements: We’ve also further polished, rewritten and tightened up some portions of the book to better explain the concepts to you, the reader!

It’s part of our quality commitment to you, as a reader, to update our products as often and as best we can, to make sure you stay on the cutting edge of the tech you depend upon!

What’s Inside Push Notifications by Tutorials?

Here’s the complete view of what’s contained in this book:

1. Introduction: A quick introduction over what you’ll be learning this book, and what you’ll need to get started.
2. Push Notification Introduction: Just before diving in, learn the basics of what is a push notification, what the flow is for delivering them, and what are they useful for.
3. Remote Notification Payload: A push notification is constructed and delivered based on a payload structure. In this chapter you’ll dive deep into all of the possible customizations and options to this payload structure.
4. Xcode Project Setup: Learn how to prepare your Xcode project so the user app is capable of receiving push notifications, and how to register users of your app for receiving notifications.
5. Sending Your First Push Notification: Learn about Apple Push Notification Servers (APNs) – Apple’s service for delivering push notifications. What is a device token, and how do you test sending notifications from your own Mac?
6. Server Side Pushes: Delivery of remote push notifications is usually done by a remote server. Learn how to create your very own Vapor-based server to register device tokens and deliver notifications from your own server, as well as some of the optional third-party providers you could use.
7. Expanding the Application: Now that you have a server responsible for delivering your notifications, you’ll learn how to expand your app to communicate with that server.
8. Handling Common Scenarios: Learn how to handle common scenarios relating to push notification such as delivering notification in the foreground, handling user interactions, silent notification, and pre-fetching content in the background when your notification is delivered to the user.
9. Custom Actions: Add Custom Actions to your notification, and learn how you can leverage these to take your notification interaction to the next level.
10. Modifying the Payload: Learn how to modify the push notification payload after it actually arrives at the user’s device, which lets you manipulate your notifications on-device in an extremely fine-grained way.
11. Custom Interfaces: Step up your notification game! Build your very own custom UI to present to your users whenever they interact with your notifications.
12. Putting It All Together: Combine all of the vast knowledge accumulated in the previous into building your final app – CoolCalendar.
13. Local Notifications: Sometimes scheduling notifications on the device itself can prove to be the right choice, instead of receiving remote notifications from an external server. Learn how to schedule local notifications on specific times, or on specific locations.

By the end of this book, you’ll be a master of push notifications and well on your way to implementing them inside your own apps!

Meet the Author

Of course, the book would be nothing without the effort of our solo author, Scott:

Scott Grosch has been involved with iOS app development since the first release of the public SDK from Apple. He mostly works with a small set of clients on a couple large apps. During the day, Scott is a Solutions Architect at a Fortune 500 company in the Pacific Northwest. At night, he’s still working on figuring out how to be a good parent to a toddler with his wife.

Where to Go From Here?

Push Notifications by Tutorials has been fully updated for its third edition, and it’s available today. And like all of our books, it’s been automatically added to the collections of all Ultimate Pro subscribers!

Want your own copy of Push Notification by Tutorials? There are two ways you can get this book:

• Buy it individually: If you want to build up a custom library without a subscription, you can choose to buy the book individually. It’s available now for just $59.99 in our online store.
• Get it as part an Ultimate Pro book and video subscription: Enjoy access to over 4,000+ videos and every single one of our 40+ professional mobile development books, including Push Notifications by Tutorials! Right now, you can get a full year’s Ultimate Pro subscription and save 20% off the cost of a regular monthly subscription. It’s simply the best investment for your mobile development career.

We hope you enjoy Push Notifications by Tutorials, Third Edition, and all of the updates we’ve made to the book!