Thursday, June 1, 2017

Improved Push Notification of our Motivational Quotes App



A few weeks back I had released our Motivational Quotes app at Google Play Store.
Lots of people are installing this App, and it is getting some positive comments. And, it is earning me money from AdMob ads. So, I had spent significant time in improving this app, and for adding more motivational Quotes. Today I uploaded the latest version to the Google play store. If you like Motivational Quotes, you can freely download it from Google Play Store by visiting this link.

 This new update is mainly for improving the Push notification delivery/display.
I am daily sending a Motivational Quote as Android Push Notification from the Firebase console.
Previously, tapping the notification/quotes on the notification system tray used to open the main activity of our app. I thought it will be better to open a separate activity for showing the notification/Quotes.



Since firebase console is not having option to include "click_action", everyone in various forum discussions was saying that it is not possible to use firebase console to send push notification that can be opened in specific activity instead of main activity. It seemed like I had to write a php code to send the notification from our own server instead of using firebase console. But I preferred to stick with firebase console as it is having many desired features like opening rate stats, and showing the list of all the already sent messages.
So, I did further search to find a way to do it using firebase console itself. And, finally I came to know about a workaround to implement it.
I had to add the below code in main activity to open the notification activity when tapping the push notification.

//for starting QOD notification activityIntent intent=getIntent();
if (intent.hasExtra("run_activity")) {
    Intent resultIntent = new Intent(getApplicationContext(), NotificationOpenActivity.class);
    String qod_message="Quote of the Day"; //default value    if (intent.hasExtra("message")) {
        qod_message=intent.getStringExtra("message");
    }
    resultIntent.putExtra("message",qod_message);
    startActivity(resultIntent);
}

And,  while sending Quotes from the firebase console, I had to send custom data also to make it work correctly.

Since, it is working as expected, I am planning to continue this approach instead of implementing app server.
As the Daily Notification Quotes is now opening in separate activity, I am planning to use the space in that screen effectively to provide more useful information. Right now I have added Do it any way poem, 45 Life lessons and 40 secrets for happy life. I beleive this approach will encourage the users to open the notification as the additional content will be available only when opening the app from the notification. I am planning to add more useful content in future if this approach is going to get positive reviews.

Let me (rajamanickam.a@gmail.com) know if you find any issue in using our Quotes app, and especially when receiving daily quotes notification. If you have already installed it, you need to update to this new version to see the new changes.

If you like this app, refer this app to your friends and add your review comments at Google Play Store.

At Google Play store, we can find lot of other good motivational quotes apps. Some will be having attractive designs, and some other apps will be having huge number of quotes. Still our Quotes App is having its own unique advantages. I am keeping it very simple so that anyone can use it without worrying about memory, battery and data usage. It will work offline without internet connection. Please let me know your suggestions to improve

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