Live Activities

Live Activities enable apps to display dynamic, real-time updates directly on glanceable areas like the Lock Screen, iPhone StandBy, Dynamic Island, and Apple Watch’s Smart Stack, allowing users to monitor ongoing events, activities, or tasks without constantly reopening the app.

Ideal for tracking short-to-medium-length tasks, Live Activities present prioritized information such as live sports scores, delivery updates, or fitness metrics, and can offer interactive options for user control. For best practices, ensure a concise layout suited to all display locations, avoid sensitive information, and refrain from using Live Activities for advertising, preserving them as a tool for useful, timely updates.

Netmera and Live Activities

To facilitate this feature, Netmera has integrated additional functionalities into the existing message delivery framework specifically designed for Live Activity.

Prerequisites and Setup ⚠️

• Ensure your Swift SDK version is at least 4.2.0

• A p8 push certificate is required to enable Live Activity updates.

• Starting with iOS 17.2, you can remotely initiate Live Activities via Netmera.

Apple Materials

• Starting and updating Live Activities with ActivityKit push notifications

• Displaying live data with Live Activities

• Human Interface Guidelines for Live Activities

This guide outlines the steps to initiate, update, and end Live Activity with Netmera’s API, enabling dynamic notifications on iOS devices. Below are the essential setup instructions, endpoint examples, and details on how to manage the lifecycle of a Live Acxtivity.

Netmera Live Activity Sample

You can find a sample project below, which you may use as a reference for your implementation.

Step 1: Define the Live Activity Structure

1.1 Configure Info.plist for Live Activity Support

Ensure the following keys are added to your app’s Info.plist

<key>NSSupportsLiveActivities</key>
<true/>
<key>NSSupportsLiveActivitiesFrequentUpdates</key>
<true/>

1.2 Implement ActivityAttributes

Each Live Activity must define its own custom ActivityAttributes struct. For Netmera compatibility, it must conform to NetmeraLiveActivityAttributes.

• netmeraGroupId is required and must be unique per activity. It allows Netmera to group and update the same activity across multiple users with a single request.

• ActivityAttributes defines both static and dynamic properties.

• ContentState holds the dynamic fields that can be updated.

Example:

import Foundation
import ActivityKit
import NetmeraLiveActivity

struct MatchScoreAttributes: ActivityAttributes, NetmeraLiveActivityAttributes {

    var netmeraGroupId: String?
    
    var homeTeamName: String
    var awayTeamName: String
    var homeTeamLogo: String
    var awayTeamLogo: String
    
    public static var activityIdentifier: String = "MatchScoreAttributes"
    
    public struct ContentState: Codable, Hashable {
        var homeTeamScore: Int
        var awayTeamScore: Int
        var matchStatus: String
       
    }
}

Step 2: Start a Live Activity

You can start an activity remotely or locally:

• Remote: You must call the Netmera.register(forType:name:) method early in your app’s lifecycle, before the push-to-start token is generated, then start an activity using the /rest/3.0/sendBulkNotification endpoint.

• Local: Create an instance of your Live Activity, then use the Netmera.observeActivity method to let Netmera manage token and state updates of your activity.

if #available(iOS 17.2, *) {
    Netmera.register(forType: Activity<MatchScoreAttributes>.self, name: "MatchScoreAttributes")
}

curl --location 'https://restapi.netmera.com/rest/3.0/sendBulkNotification' \
--header 'X-netmera-api-key: your_rest_api_key' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data '{
    "message": {
        "title": "Live Activity Start",
        "text": "Here your live activity",
        "platforms": [
            "IOS"
        ],
        "contentState": {
            "homeTeamScore": 0,
            "awayTeamScore": 0,
            "matchStatus": "1st Half"
        },
        "liveActAttr": {
            "netmeraGroupId": "ars-liv-2025",
            "homeTeamName": "Arsenal",
            "awayTeamName": "Liverpool",
            "homeTeamLogo": "barcelona_logo",
            "awayTeamLogo": "madrid_logo"
        },
        "liveActAttrType": "MatchScoreAttributes"
    },
    "type": "LIVE_ACTIVITY",
    "target": {
        "sendToAll": true
    }
}'

Netmera.observeActivity(matchActivity)

import NetmeraCore
import NetmeraLiveActivity
import ActivityKit

class LiveActivityManager {

    func startMatchActivity() {
        let attributes = MatchScoreAttributes(
            netmeraGroupId: "ars-liv-2025",
            homeTeamName: "Arsenal",
            awayTeamName: "Liverpool",
            homeTeamLogo: "arsenal_logo",
            awayTeamLogo: "liverpool_logo"
        )
        
        let contentState = MatchScoreAttributes.ContentState(
            homeTeamScore: 0,
            awayTeamScore: 0,
            matchStatus: "1st half"
        )
        
        matchActivity = try Activity.request(
            attributes: attributes,
            contentState: contentState,
            pushType: .token // Important: Use `.token` to enable Netmera to manage push-based updates
        )
        
        if let matchActivity {
            Netmera.observeActivity(matchActivity)
        }
    }
}

Step 3: Resume Activity Tracking

To ensure Netmera continues tracking Live Activities when the app is reopened:

• If the app is terminated, its connection with the Live Activity is lost.

• To resume tracking token updates or activity state changes, the existing Live Activity must be observed again when the app is relaunched.

• This should be handled inside the application(_:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:) method of your AppDelegate.

• Doing so ensures that both locally and remotely started activities are properly re-observed on app launch.

Use the following method:

Netmera.resumeObservingActivities(ofType: Activity<MatchScoreAttributes>.self)

Example:

import UIKit
import ActivityKit
import NetmeraLiveActivity

@main
class AppDelegate: UIResponder, UIApplicationDelegate, UNUserNotificationCenterDelegate {

    func application(
        _ application: UIApplication,
        didFinishLaunchingWithOptions launchOptions: [UIApplication.LaunchOptionsKey: Any]?
    ) -> Bool {
        Netmera.initialize()
        ...
        
        if #available(iOS 16.1, *) {
            Netmera.resumeObservingActivities(ofType: Activity<MatchScoreAttributes>.self)
        }
        return true
    }
}

Step 4: Update a Live Activity via Netmera REST API

You can update the content of an ongoing Live Activity by sending a REST API request to Netmera:

curl --location 'https://restapi.netmera.com/rest/3.0/update-live-activity' \
--header 'X-netmera-api-key: your_rest_api_key' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data '{
    "groupId": "ars-liv-2025",
    "action": "UPDATE",
    "contentState": {
        "homeTeamScore": 1,
        "awayTeamScore": 0,
        "matchStatus": "2nd Half"
    },
    "priority": 10
}'

Step 5: End a Live Activity via Netmera's REST API

To stop a Live Activity, send an END action request via Netmera REST API:

curl --location 'https://restapi.netmera.com/rest/3.0/update-live-activity' \
--header 'X-netmera-api-key: your_rest_api_key' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data '{
    "groupId": "ars-liv-2025",
    "action": "END",
    "priority": 10
}'

Unregistering a Live Activity

You can stop tracking a specific Live Activity in your app by calling:

Netmera.unregister(name: matchActivity)

Important Notes:

• The name parameter must exactly match the identifier used during registration with Netmera.register(...).

• If the names do not match exactly, the unregistration will not take effect.

• Example use case: When a user removes a football match from their favorites and no longer wants updates on the lock screen or widget, call the unregister method.

You can stop tracking a specific Live Activity using the Netmera.unregister(name:) method.

Debugging Tip

If you encounter the error:

[LiveActivityManagerImpl.swift] 
Cannot observe activity, missing required attribute: netmeraGroupId

It indicates that the netmeraGroupId attribute is missing. Ensure it is correctly provided in your ActivityAttributes structure.