[Development] Repository request: Qt Notifier

[Shawn Rutledge]

> On 15 Jan 2018, at 16:25, Ryan Chu <Ryan.Chu at qt.io> wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm working on a task supporting "Push Notification" for Qt applications. This feature will be implemented on Android and iOS devices as the first stage. A new module called "Qt Notify" will be created for all platforms. Therefore I request a repository.

It will need to have multiple backends right from the beginning.

The usual problem on Android is that GCN depends on Google Play Services: it's not a built-in Android feature.  So some privacy-respecting free software uses polling solutions instead.  But polling solutions tend to drain the battery by using the radio too much (so I have had trouble using such apps).  That’s a shame (technically) because GCM manages to get all apps’ notifications over a single connection, which is idle most of the time and thus about as efficient as it can be.

Depending on a third-party library is weird though, I agree…

So maybe we need two backends already on Android.  One using GCN, and one where we try to make a polling solution that is good enough to actually use as an alternative.

iOS has APNS.  (They pioneered the idea, if memory serves.)

On other platforms we could imagine having alternative backends that use standards-based network solutions like XMPP or Matrix (but there are many many others to choose from, potentially).  https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ will use Matrix, so maybe we should help them support the same API that we come up with, so that Qt apps will be portable to that platform too, when it comes out.  (They’ve already said they want to support Qt on it.)

Personally I’m interested in trying to use LoRaWAN for such purposes.