This chapter contains the steps you need to set up your Blackberry Rhodes client and RhoConnect server for push messaging. After you perform the steps in this chapter, you will finish by performing the client setup that is needed for all platforms.
To set up your RhoConnect application for pushing to a BlackBerry client, you will need to update settings/settings.yml to include the following:
:development: :redis: localhost:6379 :mdsserver: 192.168.1.110 :mdsserverport: 8080 :syncserver: http://localhost:9292/application/ :licensefile: settings/license.key
Replace :mdsserver: and :mdsserverport: with the hostname/IP and port of your machine (default port is 8080).
Enable push in your rhodes application in build.yml.
capabilities: - push
Notifications to BlackBerry are sent using PAP 2.0 message through a BES/MDS server.
On the simulator, this is done via the MDS simulator tool (which you’ve probably already seen in the form of a console window every time you do ‘rake run:bb’). On the device, this is done through the BES/MDS server that the phone is configured to use.
These instructions assume you are familiar with BES/MDS concepts (for more information please see here).
In case of Blackberry, if the application is in the background, an alert operation will bring the application upfront; other operations will not.
Make sure you close the BlackBerry simulator and MDS simulator before continuing for your changes to take effect!
To enable the push port in your MDS simulator, edit the following file:
C:\Program Files\Research In Motion\BlackBerry JDE <VERSION YOU ARE BUILDING>\MDS\config\rimpublic.property
Uncomment the last line of the file, which should be ‘push.application.reliable.ports=100’:
push.application.reliable.ports=100
To listen for incoming messages on BlackBerry, the Rhodes application will start when the device powers on, and will run a listener thread in the background. You will use the “push_port” option in the rhoconfig.txt to specify the listening port for incoming push messages. If “push_port” is not specified, default will be 100 as shown in the previous section.
For testing push on the BlackBerry simulator, you should preform the following ‘kickstart’ process. When the simulator starts, open the web browser on the simulator and navigate to any web page (i.e. http://m.google.com/). Now your simulator is ready to receive push messages.
To test push on a BlackBerry device, you will need to use a device that is configured with a BES server. Then, build your Rhodes application for the device.
Rhodes 2.2 and higher supports the Blackberry Push Service.
Define in rhoconfig.txt which push to use (if empty or missed, only MDS push is supported).
push_options = 'mds;push_service'
The following parameters are from PushApplicationDescriptor. Set them in rhoconfig.txt:
push_service_url = 'https://pushapi.eval.blackberry.com/' push_service_port = 20558 push_service_appname = 'RhoTest' push_service_type = 'BPAS'
In case of Blackberry Rhodes client, if the audio file is in the public folder, the file name will be /apps/public/alerts/test-file.mp3.
Once you have completed the above steps for setting up push on Blackberry client and RhoConnect server, you must still perform the client setup that is needed for all platforms.