Overview

The Microsoft Push Notification Service in Windows Phone offers third party developers a resilient, dedicated, and persistent channel to send information and updates to a Windows Phone application from their web sites (web services).

In the past, a mobile application would need to frequently poll its corresponding web service to know if there are any pending notifications. While effective, polling results in the device radio being frequently turned on, impacting battery life in a negative way. By using push notifications instead of polling, a web service can notify an application of important updates on an as-needed basis.

When a web service has information to send to an application, it sends a push notification to the Push Notification Service, which in turn routes the push notification to the application. Depending on the format of the push notification and the payload attached to it, the information is delivered as raw data to the application, the application's tile is visually updated, or a toast notification is displayed. The application can then contact the web service using its own protocol, if needed.

The Push Notification Service sends a response code to your web service after a push notification is sent. However, the Push Notification Service does not provide an end-to-end confirmation that your push notification was delivered from your web service to your application. For more information, see Push Notification Service Response Codes for Windows Phone

This lab covers the push notification and also introduces the usage of http services in Silverlight. During this lab you will create server side logic needed to send messages through Push Notification Service. You will create a simple Windows Phone 7 application which serves as a client to receive such notifications. The client application will receive weather updates. The server side business application (simple WPF application) will send weather alerts to registered client applications through Push Notification Services. Once client Windows Phone 7 application will receive such alert it will display received information.

Objectives

At the end of the lab you will:

• Familiarize with the communication capabilities of Windows Phone 7 application
• Familiarize with the push notification concepts and the behaviors they enable on the phone
• Understand how push notification works on the phone and in the cloud
• Use the phone push notification services to create a subscription for Tokens (tiles), Toasts, and raw push notification
• Use web client to register for Push Notifications
• Use the network status to display the current status of the phone network
• Create a SL application that register for push notification services (both token and toast)
  • Handle push events (token, toast, and raw)during run time
  • Show token and toast on shell

Prerequisites

The following is required to complete this hands-on lab:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone or Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
• Windows Phone Developer Tools
  Note:

  All of these Tools can be downloaded together in a single package from http://developer.windowsphone.com

Setup

For convenience, much of the code used in this hands-on lab is available as Visual Studio code snippets. To install the code snippets:

1. Run the .vsi installer located in the lab's Source\Setup folder.
   Note:

   If you have issues running the code snippets installer you can install the code snippets manually by copying all the .snippet files located in the Source\Setup\CodeSnippets folder of the lab to the following folder:

   My Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Code Snippets\Visual C#\My Code Snippets

Using the Code Snippets

With code snippets, you have all the code you need at your fingertips. The lab document will tell you exactly when you can use them. For example,

To add this code snippet in Visual Studio, you simply place the cursor where you would like the code to be inserted, start typing the snippet name (without spaces or hyphens), watch as IntelliSense picks up the snippet name, and then press the Tab key twice when the snippet you want is selected. The code will be inserted at the cursor location.

To insert a code snippet using the mouse rather than the keyboard, right-click where you want to insert the code snippet, select Insert Snippet followed by My Code Snippets and then pick the relevant snippet from the list.

To learn more about Visual Studio IntelliSense Code Snippets, including how to create your own, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms165392.aspx.

Exercises

This hands-on lab comprises the following exercises:

1. Introduction to the Windows Phone RAW notifications for Updates
2. Introduction to the Toast and Tile Notifications for Alerts

Estimated time to complete this lab: 90 minutes.