iOS Inbox

Inbox Feature: Notification Handling

The Inbox feature within our platform manages push notifications in a manner designed to provide users with the most relevant and up-to-date information. One aspect of this functionality involves the handling of notifications sent within a specific time frame. Therefore, notifications sent five minutes ago and earlier will be deleted when a new notification is received. This ensures that only the latest and most pertinent information is retained in the user's inbox.

If your application needs information about the push notifications that are previously sent to device by Netmera, you can use NetmeraInbox class to fetch that information from Netmera.

The most common use case for this would be to show the list of notifications inside your application in an inbox-style interface.

NetmeraInbox is the core class providing methods and properties needed for operations on push notifications like fetching push objects or updating push objects' status, but you can not directly initialize a NetmeraInbox instance. You get an instance from SDK, then operate on that instance for future inbox actions. Here is the common workflow to use inbox feature of Netmera.

Determine properties of push notifications to fetch

You must first define filtering properties by creating a NetmeraInboxFilter instance. You determine which push notifications will be included in the fetched list by setting related properties of this NetmeraInboxFilter instance.

NetmeraInboxFilter class provides filtering according to the following options:

• Inbox Status: Read / Unread / Deleted

• Categories: Categories to which push notifications are belong.

• Including expired push notifications or not.

• Page Size: This is not to filter, but to determine the size of chunks which will be gathered during one request.

Here is a sample code to determine filtering options:

Swift

let filter = NetmeraInboxFilter()
// Default value is NetmeraInboxStatusRead | NetmeraInboxStatusUnread
filter.status = NetmeraInboxStatus.all
// Default value is NSUIntegerMax
filter.pageSize = 20
// Default value is nil
filter.categories = ["category_1", "category_2"]
// Default value is NO
filter.shouldIncludeExpiredObjects = true

Objective-C

NetmeraInboxFilter *filter = [[NetmeraInboxFilter alloc] init];

// Default value is NetmeraInboxStatusRead | NetmeraInboxStatusUnread
filter.status = NetmeraInboxStatusAll;

// Default value is NSUIntegerMax
filter.pageSize = 20;

// Default value is nil
filter.categories = @[@"category_1", @"category_2"];

// Default value is NO
filter.shouldIncludeExpiredObjects = YES;

Fetch the first page and get the NetmeraInbox instance

Now, you can request from Netmera to return the list of push notification objects matching with the filter object using the following code:

Swift

Netmera.fetchInbox(using: filter, completion: {(_ inbox: NetmeraInbox, _ error: Error?) -> Void in
            if error != nil {
                print("Error : \(String(describing: error?.localizedDescription))")
            }
            // Store returned inbox object for future operations
            var localInbox: NetmeraInbox?  // local inbox definition global variable
            localInbox = inbox
        })

If fetch operations succeeds, method will call given block with an inbox object which contains the first chunk of push notifications matching with given filter, and a nil error. Otherwise, block is called with a nil inbox parameter and an error object containing details about the reasons of failure.

Now you can present the list of push objects inside your application. You get the list using inbox.objects property, which is an array of NetmeraPushObject instances.

Filter properties of an inbox instance could not be changed. If you need modified filter properties, you have to start a new fetch operation using [Netmera fetchInboxUsingFilter:completion:] method.

Objective-C

[Netmera fetchInboxUsingFilter:filter
                    completion:^(NetmeraInbox *inbox, NSError *error) {
                      if(error) {
                        NSLog(@"Error : %@", [error debugDescription]);
                      }
                      // Store returned inbox object for future operations
                      self.inbox = inbox;
                    }];

Update the status of push notifications

Push notifications may have 3 different states, which are the following:

• Unread

• Read

• Deleted

These three states allows you to implement a simple notification inbox interface for your users where they can read messages, mark previously read message as unread, delete messages and restore them again if needed.

You can make transitions among states for push notifications inside inbox using -updateStatus:forPushObjects:completion: method. Calling this method will start an asynchronous request to update status for given push objects, and given completion block will be called upon the result of the request.

Here is a sample implementation which deleted the first 5 push objects from inbox:

Swift

let array = [0,1,2,3,4]
let indexSet = IndexSet(array)
let deletedObjects: [Any]? = localInbox?.objects.objects(at: indexSet)
localInbox?.update(NetmeraInboxStatus.deleted, for: deletedObjects as! [NetmeraPushObject], completion: {(_ error: Error?) -> Void in
            if error != nil {
                print("Error : \(String(describing: error?.localizedDescription))")
            }
        })

If operation fails for some reason, completion block will be called with a nonnull error parameter describing the reasons of failure.

You can change the status of all the notifications in Inbox with a single method. You can call this method without calling the fetch / inbox method.

Objective-C

NSIndexSet *set = [NSIndexSet indexSetWithIndexesInRange:NSMakeRange(0, 5)];
NSArray *deletedObjects = [inbox.objects objectsAtIndexes:set];
[self.inbox updateStatus:NetmeraInboxStatusDeleted
          forPushObjects:deletedObjects
              completion:^(NSError *error) {
                if(error) {
                  NSLog(@"Error : %@", [error debugDescription]);
                }
              }];

Updating the status of all notifications

You may use this code when you want to update the status of all notifications. For instance, using .(.read) here marks all items as read. To mark all items as unread or deleted, add (.unread) or (.delete) within the parentheses.

Swift

Netmera.update(.read) { (error) in
   //TODO:
  }

Objective-C

[Netmera updateStatus:NetmeraInboxStatusRead forAllWithCompletion:^(NSError * _Nonnull error) {
  // TODO:
 }];

Fetch more pages

If you set a custom pageSize value as a filtering option, result of the first fetch operation may not contain all push objects which matches with the given filtering criteria. In this case, you can fetch next chunk of objects using the following code:

Swift

// Fetch next page using `NetmeraInbox` object
localInbox?.fetchNextPage(completionBlock: {(_ error: Error?) -> Void in
            if error != nil {
                print("Error : \(String(describing: error?.localizedDescription))")
            }
        })

NetmeraInbox instance returned as the result of -fetchInboxUsingFilter:completion: method stores the fetched list of objects incrementally. Specifically, inbox.objects property will include all list of objects fetched until that time.

For instance, if you set pageSize as 10, and fetch 3 pages in total (one with -fetchInboxUsingFilter:completion:, two with -fetchNextPageWithCompletionBlock:), inbox.objects array will contain all 30 objects in these 3 pages. Therefore, you can solely rely on this array while showing push notifications to your users inside a table view or collection view.

If operation fails for some reason, completion block will be called with a nonnull error parameter describing the reasons of failure.

If you call this method when there is no more page left, method immediately calls completion block with an appropriate error.

You can check if you have fetched all pages via hasNextPage property of NetmeraInbox instance. It will have value NO when all pages have been fetched.

Objective-C

// Fetch next page using `NetmeraInbox` object
[inbox fetchNextPageWithCompletionBlock:^(NSError *error) {
  if(error) {
    NSLog(@"Error : %@", [error debugDescription]);
    }
}];

Get count of push notifications according to status

You can show your users information about total count of push notifications according to inbox status using -countForStatus: method like this:

Swift

// Get the total count of all unread and read push notifications
// existing in Netmera servers for this device
if localInbox?.count(for: NetmeraInboxStatus.unread) != nil && localInbox?.count(for: NetmeraInboxStatus.read) != nil {
            let numOfReadOrUnread = (localInbox?.count(for: NetmeraInboxStatus.unread))! + (localInbox?.count(for: NetmeraInboxStatus.read))!
        }

Objective-C

// Get the total count of all unread and read push notifications
// existing in Netmera servers for this device
NSUInteger *numOfReadOrUnread = [inbox countForStatus:NetmeraInboxStatusUnread | NetmeraInboxStatusRead];

Light fetching

You can count inbox without fetching all the pushes.

Method

+ (void)fetchInboxCountWithFilter:(NetmeraInboxCountFilter *)filter
completion:(void (^)(NetmeraInboxCountResponse * _Nullable response, NSError * _Nullable error))completionBlock

Swift Example:

let filter = NetmeraInboxCountFilter()
filter.status = {status}
filter.categories = {categoryList}
Netmera.fetchInboxCount(with: filter) { response, error in
if let error = error {
print("inbox count error: \(error)")
} else if let response = response {
print("Read: \(response.count(for: .read)) Unread: \(response.count(for: .unread)) deleted: \(response.count(for: .deleted)) all: \(response.count(for: .all))")
}
}

Message Category

In Netmera, we have a feature called Message Category. You may specify your categories in the Setting > Message Category page in the panel.

User Category Preferences:

To retrieve the user's category preferences, use the following method. It will return a list of category preferences, where each category preference data includes id, name, and enable status.

Netmera.getUserCategoryPreferenceList { categories, error in
    if let categories = categories {
        print(categories)
    } else if let error = error {
        print(error)
    }
}

Managing Category Preferences:

To manage the preference of a category and switch its status, use the following method. Provide the category ID and set the categoryEnabled parameter to either true or false.

Netmera.setUserCategoryPreferenceWithCategoryId("{categoryId}", categoryEnabled: {true/false}) { error in
    // Handle the result or error accordingly
    ...
}

These methods allow you to effectively fetch and manage category preferences for users in Netmera.