Introduction
In this article we are going to see how to use
the Raw Notifications to sent messages. In our earlier article
we have seen how to use the Toast and Tile notifications to send receive message
as per the requirement and nature of the usage. Raw Notifications are not like
the TOAST and TILE notification, these notifications are generated by the
application itself or from a web service. The application needs to be up and
running in order to receive these notifications. If the application is not
running then the message will be discarded and we will be getting error on the
notification
Let us jump start to see the step by step
process on how to use Raw Notification Mechanism to do notifications, unlike
Tile we will not have a much good looking image to show the notification rather
we will try to catch the notification to the message box.
Steps
Open Visual Studio 2010 and create a new
Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 Application with a valid project name as shown
in the screen below.
![img9.gif]()
Now let us start designing the interface to
create a channel, as we discussed in our previous article () we will create the
channel first which will be required to communicate for the Raw Notifications.
if there are any already available notification events available it will use the
same else it will create a new notification event and then connects through the
channel. Add the below XAML code to get the channel notification to trigger.
XAML Code
<Grid
x:Name="LayoutRoot"
Background="Transparent">
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition
Height="Auto"/>
<RowDefinition
Height="*"/>
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<!--TitlePanel contains the name of the application and page
title-->
<StackPanel
x:Name="TitlePanel"
Grid.Row="0"
Margin="12,17,0,28">
<TextBlock
x:Name="ApplicationTitle"
Text="F5DEBUG
WP7 TUTORIALS"
Style="{StaticResource
PhoneTextNormalStyle}"/>
<TextBlock
x:Name="PageTitle"
Text="Raw
Notification"
Margin="9,-7,0,0"
Style="{StaticResource
PhoneTextTitle1Style}"/>
</StackPanel>
<!--ContentPanel - place additional content here-->
<Grid
x:Name="ContentPanel"
Grid.Row="1"
Margin="12,0,12,0">
<Button
Content="Establish
Channel!!!"
Height="149"
HorizontalAlignment="Left"
Margin="73,88,0,0"
Name="button1"
VerticalAlignment="Top"
Width="299"
Click="button1_Click"
/>
</Grid>
</Grid
Now we need to go to the code behind and start
the process of establishing the Notification channel to get the events trigger.
To do that first we need to add the below two using statements.
Code Behind
using
Microsoft.Phone.Notification;
using System.Diagnostics;
Now let us add the event handlers for sending
the URI to the web service, to handle notification errors and for receiving the
raw notification which is application specific as shown in the below 3 event
handler codes.
Code Behind
<Grid
x:Name="LayoutRoot"
Background="Transparent">
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition
Height="Auto"/>
<RowDefinition
Height="*"/>
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<!--TitlePanel
contains the name of the application and page title-->
<StackPanel
x:Name="TitlePanel"
Grid.Row="0"
Margin="12,17,0,28">
<TextBlock
x:Name="ApplicationTitle"
Text="F5DEBUG
WP7 TUTORIALS"
Style="{StaticResource
PhoneTextNormalStyle}"/>
<TextBlock
x:Name="PageTitle"
Text="Raw
Notification"
Margin="9,-7,0,0"
Style="{StaticResource
PhoneTextTitle1Style}"/>
</StackPanel>
<!--ContentPanel - place additional content here-->
<Grid
x:Name="ContentPanel"
Grid.Row="1"
Margin="12,0,12,0">
<Button
Content="Establish
Channel!!!"
Height="149"
HorizontalAlignment="Left"
Margin="73,88,0,0"
Name="button1"
VerticalAlignment="Top"
Width="299"
Click="button1_Click"
/>
</Grid>
</Grid>
Now we need to write the code to get the open
channel details which will be used to send the Raw Notification, to do that we
will use the output window to get the channel details. Copy the below code to
the code behind page. Also we need to have a method which will do the channel
setup step by step, first it will check if the channel is already available if
its available we need to check the channel is null if null then we need to close
the channel and open a new channel. But initially if the channel is not
available then we can directly create the HttpNotificationChannel and do the
process to create the channel as shown in the screen below.
Code Behind
private
void SetupChannel()
{
HttpNotificationChannel
pushRawChannel;
string strRawchannelName = "RawChannel0";
pushRawChannel =
HttpNotificationChannel.Find(strRawchannelName);
if
(pushRawChannel == null)
{
pushRawChannel =
new HttpNotificationChannel(strRawchannelName);
pushRawChannel.ChannelUriUpdated += new
EventHandler(RawNotificationChannelURI);
pushRawChannel.ErrorOccurred += new
EventHandler(RawNotificationError);
pushRawChannel.HttpNotificationReceived += new
EventHandler(RawNotificationReceived);
pushRawChannel.Open();
}
else
{
pushRawChannel.ChannelUriUpdated += new
EventHandler(RawNotificationChannelURI);
pushRawChannel.ErrorOccurred += new
EventHandler(RawNotificationError);
pushRawChannel.HttpNotificationReceived += new
EventHandler(RawNotificationReceived);
System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(pushRawChannel.ChannelUri.ToString());
Debug.WriteLine(String.Format("Channel
Uri = {0}", pushRawChannel.ChannelUri.ToString()));
}
}
Now we need to call the above method on the button
click event as shown in the screen below.
Code Behind
private
void button1_Click(object
sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
SetupChannel();
}
Now we are done with the Windows phone 7 client
notification application, we will check by building and executing the
application and we can see the Windows Phone 7 Emulator as shown in the screen
below.
![img2.png]()
Now click on the Establish Channel button which
will establish the channel if not already created else will use existing channel
and we can see the channel URI in the Output window since we have coded to get
the channel details. To get the output window just go to the Visual Studio tool
bar and select View –> Output window and we can see the output window as shown
in the screen below.
![img3.png]()
Let us copy and keep the channel details on to
a separate notepad, Now we need to create a Server to post the tile
notifications to the application device to show the Raw Notification message. We
will create a web page from which we will post the Raw Notifications and get the
notification on to the Windows Phone 7 device. To start with first create a
ASP.NET Web application in C# as shown in the screen below.
![img 4.png]()
Now add the below design code to the ASPX page
so that we will get the same look and feel for this tutorial, here we have added
3 labels and 3 textboxes to get the user inputs (Channel URI, Title and Sub
Title) and a button to trigger the event for the tile message to be sent to the
Windows Phone 7 Device. Just copy and paste the below ASPX code.
ASPX Code
<%@
Page Title="Home
Page" Language="C#"
MasterPageFile="~/Site.master"
AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs"
Inherits="F5debugWp7RawNotificationServer._Default"
%>
<asp:Content
ID="HeaderContent" runat="server"
ContentPlaceHolderID="HeadContent">
<style
type="text/css">
.style1
{
width:
100%;
}
.style2
{
}
.style3
{
width:
690px;
}
.style4
{
width:
143px;
}
.style5
{
width:
38px;
}
</style>
</asp:Content>
<asp:Content
ID="BodyContent" runat="server"
ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent">
<table>
<tr>
<td
colspan="3">
<asp:Label
ID="Label1" runat="server"
Font-Bold="true"
Font-Size="Large"
Text="F5Debug
Windows Phone 7 Raw Notification"></asp:Label>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<asp:Label
ID="Label2" runat="server"
Text="Channel
URI"></asp:Label>
</td>
<td>
<asp:TextBox
ID="TextBox1" runat="server"
Width="661px"></asp:TextBox>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<asp:Label
ID="Label3" runat="server"
Text="Notification
Title"></asp:Label>
</td>
<td>
<asp:TextBox
ID="TextBox2" runat="server"
Width="661px"></asp:TextBox>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<asp:Label
ID="Label4" runat="server"
Text="Notification
SubTitle"></asp:Label>
</td>
<td>
<asp:TextBox
ID="TextBox3" runat="server"
Width="659px"></asp:TextBox>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<asp:Button
ID="Button1" runat="server"
Font-Bold="True"
onclick="Button1_Click"
Text="Send
Notification" Width="134px"
/>
</td>
<td>
<asp:Label
ID="lblresult" runat="server"></asp:Label>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</asp:Content>
![img5.png]()
Now go to the code behind and add the below
code, this code will get the user inputs mainly the Channel URI, background and
the Raw Message information and pass the message to the Microsoft Push
Notification services. Just copy the below code to proceed further.
C# Code
using
System;
using
System.Collections.Generic;
using
System.Linq;
using
System.Web;
using
System.Web.UI;
using
System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using
System.Net;
using
System.IO;
using
System.Text;
namespace
F5debugWp7RawNotificationServer
{
public partial
class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page
{
protected void
Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
}
protected void
Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
try
{
string strChannelURI = TextBox1.Text.ToString();
HttpWebRequest
sendRawNotification = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(strChannelURI);
sendRawNotification.Method = "POST";
string strRawMessage =
"<!--?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?-->"
+
"" +
"" + TextBox2.Text.ToString() +
"" +
"" + TextBox3.Text.ToString() +
"" +
"";
byte[] notificationMessage =
Encoding.Default.GetBytes(strRawMessage);
sendRawNotification.ContentLength = notificationMessage.Length;
sendRawNotification.ContentType = "text/xml";
sendRawNotification.Headers.Add("X-NotificationClass",
"3");
using (Stream requestStream =
sendRawNotification.GetRequestStream())
{
requestStream.Write(notificationMessage, 0, notificationMessage.Length);
}
HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)sendRawNotification.GetResponse();
string notificationStatus = response.Headers["X-NotificationStatus"];
string notificationChannelStatus =
response.Headers["X-SubscriptionStatus"];
string deviceConnectionStatus =
response.Headers["X-DeviceConnectionStatus"];
lblresult.Text
= notificationStatus + " | " +
deviceConnectionStatus + " | " +
notificationChannelStatus;
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
lblresult.Text
= "Exception caught: " + ex.ToString();
}
}
}
}
Now we are done with our server code, to test raw
notification first run the Windows Phone 7 application
(F5debugWp7RawNotification) and get the Channel URI or make use of the URI which
we saved in our notepad. Note that the application should be in running mode in
order to get the notification message. Now run the project
F5debugWp7RawNotificationServer web application and enter the values as shown in
the screen below.
![img6.png]()
Now click on Send Notification button and we
can see the result in the label at the bottom as shown in the screen below.
![img7.png]()
Now go to the Windows Phone 7 Emulator and we
can see the Raw Notification Message which we sent from the web application in
the Message Box as shown in the screen below.
![img8.png]()
Conclusion
So in this article we have seen how to use the
RAW Notification Mechanism to send and receive the notifications while the
application is running on the foreground.