How to send a silent push

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Push notifications can be silent, meaning that they contain no alert or sound and are mainly used to trigger actions in the app background or update the app with a payload.

Setting up silent push notifications

iOS

To utilise silent push notifications in iOS, you need to configure your application to do so even when it is in the background.

In order to configure this, in XCode, add the Background Modes capability under the Signing & Capabilities pane to the main app target. Select the Remote Notifications checkbox.

Android

There is not any requirements to use silent push on Android apps.

Sending Silent Push Notifications

It's possible to send a silent push by creating an API-triggered campaign and executing it using the campaign execute external endpoint. Set the push_silent flag to 1 in the message payload.

🚧
Attaching the title and the body with push_silent set to 1 is not recommended as it can cause undesired behaviour. For further details on iOS, please refer to the official Apple documentation on background updates.

A Sample silent push notification payload can be seen below:

curl --request POST \
     --url https://external-api.xtremepush.com/api/external/execute/campaign \
     --header 'accept: application/json' \
     --header 'content-type: application/json'{
  "id":"",
  "apptoken":"",
  "title":"Silent Push Notification”,
  "android_push":0,
  "android_push_production":0,
  "ios_push":1,
  "ios_push_production":1,
  "ios_push_sandbox":1,
  "conditions":{
     "1":{
        "1":[
           "id",
           "=",
           "<device_id>"
        ],
        "operator":"AND"
     },
     "operator":"AND"
  },
  "broadcast":"0",
  "push_text":"sample text",
  "messages":{
     "2":{
        "push_silent":1,
        "payload_add":[
           {
              "key":"",
              "value":""
           },
           {
              "key":"",
              "value":""
           },
           {
              "key":"",
              "value":""
           }
        ]
     }
  }
}'

curl --request POST \
     --url https://external-api.xtremepush.com/api/external/execute/campaign \
     --header 'accept: application/json' \
     --header 'content-type: application/json'{
  "id":"",
  "apptoken":"",
  "title":"Silent Push Notification”,
  "android_push":1,
  "android_push_production":1,
  "ios_push":0,
  "ios_push_production":0,
  "ios_push_sandbox":0,
  "conditions":{
     "1":{
        "1":[
           "id",
           "=",
           "<device_id>"
        ],
        "operator":"AND"
     },
     "operator":"AND"
  },
  "broadcast":"0",
  "push_text":"sample text",
  "messages":{
     "1":{
        "push_silent":1,
        "payload_add":[
           {
              "key":"",
              "value":""
           },
           {
              "key":"",
              "value":""
           },
           {
              "key":"",
              "value":""
           }
        ]
     }
  }
}'

Updated about 21 hours ago