Android - how can I send a GCM push notification with instructions of which activity to load?

Question

I am able to create push notifications. But currently I am just able to make people land on the home screen.

How can I send people to a specific Activity? And is it possible to also put add some parameter like item_id so the activity knows what data to load?

Or if there is a good tutorial for this somewhere, that would be great as well. I can't really seem to find much good info on this by googling.

In my GCMIntentService I have this method:

      @Override
      protected void onMessage(Context ctxt, Intent message) 
      {           
        Bundle extras=message.getExtras();

        try
        {
            String question_id = extras.getString("question_id");
//          SharedPreferences prefs = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences( this );
//          Intent intent = new Intent(ctxt, QuestionActivity.class);

            generateNotification(ctxt, extras.getString("message"), "New Message"  );           
        }
        catch ( Exception e )
        {
        }
      }

But I am not sure how to change the generateNotification to also signal what Activity the person should land on. Thanks!

Answer 1

Of course you can add a parameter like item_id. You can add any parameter you want to the notification. Unlike Apple Push Notifications, there are no predefined payload parameters, so just like you have a message parameter, you can have any other parameter with a String value (as long as the total lengths of the parameter names and values don't pass 4096 bytes).

And as for loading an Activity from the notification, you can find everything you'll need here.

Answer 2

UPDATE: Give Eran credit for the JSON, I just want to elaborate.

You can add other parameters with the data key:

{
   "registration_ids" : ["APA91bHun4MxP5egoKMwt2KZFBaFUH-1RYqx..."],
   "data": {
       "stuff": "100",
       "more": "abc"
   },
}

Then access the same way using intent.getExtras().getString("stuff").

It is all here.

Then in your generateNotifcation():

private static void generateNotification(Context context, String message) {
    NotificationManager notificationManager = (NotificationManager)
        context.getSystemService(Context.NOTIFICATION_SERVICE);
    Notification notification = new Notification(R.drawable.ic_launcher, message, when);
    String title = "...";


    //get id from json here and decide which activity to go to...
    Intent notificationIntent = new Intent(context, someClass.class);


    notificationIntent.putExtra("message",message);
    PendingIntent intent = PendingIntent.getActivity(context, 0, notificationIntent,PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT);
    notification.setLatestEventInfo(context, title, message, intent);
    notification.defaults|=Notification.DEFAULT_VIBRATE;
    notificationManager.notify(0, notification);
}