Pushy API released!

I set out yesterday to add push notifications to my app, Quotables. The reasoning is that I have recently implemented a system that allows me to Push new content (Movie Quotes) to the app via an FTP server. This allows me to add content to the app without having to submit an update to the app. The problem is that my users would have no idea that I added all this new content until they opened the app, received the new data and then noticed that there was some new stuff added.

The solution to this problem is in push notifications. What I want to do is, after I post some new quotes, send an alert to the users saying “Hey! I added some new quotes. Open the app to see them.” What I found is that this is not a simple thing to do.

Apple push notifications require a number of steps, performed on a server to implement. Mainly, you need to collect Push Id tokens for each of your users’ devices. You then need to do a bunch of SSL type communication and create a ton of batched requests to Apple’s servers to actually send the notifications. This is not easy to understand, nor to do.

I have, however figured out all these grueling details and now I am happy to unveil a brand new API that will allow you to do this same thing with ease, and without a server! Instead, you can use mine…

Now with the PushyAPI, you just need to do some basic configuration for push notifications, then add a few lines of code to your app. Once this is done, you can log into pushyAPI.com and with a few clicks send a mass push notification to all your users.