deviceToken of IOS Device

Question

I am using Monotouch for mac and have gone through the steps to retrieve a provisioning profile certificate enabling push notification in the process. I have a working app and am now experimenting with apns-sharp and moon-apns but cant' figure out how to retrieve my device token. I'm hoping someone can provide me with detailed and straightforward steps to achieve this.

Jutland

Answer 1

In your FinishedLaunching method, register the app for remote notifications, through the UIApplication object you get in it:

// Pass the UIRemoteNotificationType combinations you want
app.RegisterForRemoteNotificationTypes(UIRemoteNotificationType.Alert |
 UIRemoteNotificationType.Sound);

Then, in your AppDelegate class, override the RegisteredForRemoteNotifications method:

public override void RegisteredForRemoteNotifications (UIApplication application, NSData deviceToken)
{
    // The device token
    byte[] token = deviceToken.ToArray();
}

You also have to override the FailedToRegisterForRemoteNotifications method, to handle the error, if any:

public override void FailedToRegisterForRemoteNotifications (UIApplication application, NSError error)
{
    // Do something with the error
}

Vouch

do I have to go through all these steps?...Isnt there a way to retrieve the actual hex value of the device id? – Jutland

No, there isn't another way. Your app has to register for remote notifications every time it starts. If you are referring to the UDID, retrieving it on iOS 5+ will get your app rejected. Furthermore, the device token for remote notifications is different than the UDID and is based on your provisioning profile, notification types etc. – Vouch

Answer 2

As of iOS deviceToken has changed. The following code worked for me to convert deviceToken as NSData to a string.

string deviceTokenString;
if (UIDevice.CurrentDevice.CheckSystemVersion(13, 0))
{
    deviceTokenString = BitConverter.ToString(deviceToken.ToArray()).Replace("-", string.Empty);
}
else
{
    deviceTokenString = Regex.Replace(deviceToken.ToString(), "[^0-9a-zA-Z]+", string.Empty);
}

Rowell

This saved me a lot of headache. Thanks! – Miscegenation

Answer 3

For me this was only half of the resolution. To use the DeviceToken from a webserver (PHP in my case), the DeviceToken needs to be a Hex String used in the PHP code for firing the Push Notification (e.g. as shown here: [Using PHP to send iOS Push Notifications via APNs

However, the NSdata object offers no simple way to provide that Hex String.

So my "RegisteredForRemoteNotifications" success handler is now:

        public override void RegisteredForRemoteNotifications(UIApplication application, NSData deviceToken)
    {
        // Get current device token
        var DeviceToken = Tools.ByteToHex(deviceToken.ToArray());
        string DeviceID = UIDevice.CurrentDevice.IdentifierForVendor.AsString();
        System.Console.WriteLine("### UserNotification Device Token = " + DeviceToken + ", DeviceID = " + DeviceID);

        // Get previous device token
        var oldDeviceToken = NSUserDefaults.StandardUserDefaults.StringForKey("PushDeviceToken");

        // Has the token changed?
        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(oldDeviceToken) || !oldDeviceToken.Equals(DeviceToken))
        {
            //### todo: Populate POSTdata set
            //### todo: Send POSTdata to URL 

            // Save new device token
NSUserDefaults.StandardUserDefaults.SetString(DeviceToken, "PushDeviceToken");
            }
        }

And for the Byte to Hex Conversion:

public static string ByteToHex(byte[] data)
{
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(data.Length * 2);
    foreach (byte b in data)
    {
        sb.AppendFormat("{0:x2}", b);
    }
    return sb.ToString();
}

Now you can use the DeviceToken in PHP to create the PushNotification submission.

Inkstand