Do hybrid mobile apps support Push Notifications?

Question

Are mobile development frameworks capable of working well with Push Notifications?

Details follow:

I'm researching cross-platform mobile app development. It seems hybrid apps developed using a mobile development framework like PhoneGap, Titanium, etc provide access to core phone features (camera, accelerometer, address book, etc) while developing using web technologies (HTML5, JavaScript, CSS).

One definite requirement we have is using Push Notifications to send messages to devices that have the app installed, even when the app is closed. I understand that each platform supports this differently (Apple Push Notifications vs C2DM, etc).

I'm assuming HTML5 notifications wouldn't fit the requirement since (i'm assuming) HTML5 notifications (Web Sockets, SSE) require the app to be running.

Answer 1

PhoneGap on Android supports push notifications by adding a plugin. See here. I'm not sure about other platforms. appMobi supports out of the box push notifications for Android and iOS. See here. I can find some vague references for Titanium, but nothing specific.

Answer 2

Trigger.io supports creating hybrid apps with push notifications using only web technologies - no need to setup for local compiles or use Eclipse / XCode.

Our documentation for including push notifications is here: http://docs.trigger.io/en/v1.3/partners/parse.html

We've also blogged a tutorial here: http://trigger.io/cross-platform-application-development-blog/2012/03/23/using-parse-and-trigger-io-for-cross-platform-apps-without-pain-in-the-back-end/