Chat Client Implementation Notes

Overview

This page contains implementation notes for iOS and Android chat applications wishing to add ChatSecure-Push push messaging.

Our intention is that adding ChatSecure-Push's capabilities to your application should have no visible impact to your users until a push message arrives.

Accounts

You should create a single ChatSecure-Push account for every application install. APNS and GCM issue one push token per application install so your app will use a single ChatSecure-Push account even if it allows the user to be present as multiple chat (XMPP etc.) accounts.

Devices

You should request an APNS or GCM push token on each application launch and notify ChatSecure-Push by creating or updating a Device entity.

Whitelist Tokens

You should request Whitelist tokens and exchange those with peers that a user communicates with. A good time to do this might be during the initialization of a "conversation" view with a peer. The Whitelist token should be sent and received transparently to the user.

Push Messages

In its current form, ChatSecure-Push messages are best employed as a "knock" informing an offline user that someone would like to chat with them. As such you'd ideally present UI for "Knocking" an offline user from your app's "conversation" view.