Parse Push Notification with Phonegap Android

Parse.com provides a great service to setup push notification for your android/iphone apps, features for which can be seen here https://www.parse.com/products/push

We will see in this blog post how to integrate parse push notification with phonegap for your android application.

Before starting you need to first create an account on Parse.com and generate application app_id and client_key.

Next install the phoengap module at https://github.com/manishiitg/parse-push-plugin

This plugin uses a newer version of parse library which used Google GCM and Parse Broadcast Receiver.

Step1

To install run this command

[code]

cordova plugin install https://github.com/manishiitg/parse-push-plugin

[/code]

Step2

After the plugin gets installed, run “cordova build android” too see if the build completes successfully.

You may get an error like this

[code]

“com.android.dex.DexException: Multiple dex files define Lbolts/AggregateException;”

[/code]

The reason for this might be your using facebook android library in your app which has the “bolts-android” library and the current parse plugin also has the same library. To fix this error, open folder “platforms\android\libs” and remove the “bolts-android” jar file.

Step3

Next step, is to add Parse.initialize code. For this go to directory “platforms\android\src\com\package\app” and create a file MainApplication.java. Write this code

  
package com.company.app; //replace with your package name

import android.app.Application;
  
import org.apache.cordova.*;
  
import com.parse.Parse;
  
import com.parse.ParseAnalytics;
  
import com.parse.ParseInstallation;
  
import com.parse.PushService;
  
import com.parse.ParsePush;
  
import com.parse.ParseCrashReporting;

//// Track app opens.
  
//ParseAnalytics.trackAppOpened(getIntent());
  
// in cordova activty
  
public class MainApplication extends Application {

@Override
      
public void onCreate() {
        
super.onCreate();
        
ParseCrashReporting.enable(getApplicationContext()); //this only if you want to use crash reporting
        
Parse.initialize(this, "app\_id", "client\_key");
        
PushService.setDefaultPushCallback(this, CordovaApp.class);
        
ParsePush.subscribeInBackground("Broadcast"); // if you want all app users to subscribe to a channel
        
ParseInstallation.getCurrentInstallation().saveInBackground();
      
}
  
}
  

Open your CordovaApp.java file and put in line “ParseAnalytics.trackAppOpened(getIntent());” in the onCreate method. Also don’t forgot to get add “import com.parse.ParseAnalytics;” in your CordovaApp.java file.

Now open “AndroidManifest.xml” located in “platforms/android” find the “application” tag and add “android:name=”com.company.app.MainApplication” as attribute to the application tag.

Step5

Run your app using

If you get error link

[code]

error: cannot access Task

[/code]

this means the bolts library is missing from android/platform/libs

[code]

cordova run android

[/code]

At this point, if you send push notification from parse your app should receive it.

Step6

To be able to receive notification inside your phonegap application use code

  
ParsePushPlugin.register({
      
appId:"PARSE\_APPID", clientKey:"PARSE\_CLIENT_KEY", eventKey:"myEventKey"},
      
function() {
          
alert('successfully registered device!');
      
}, function(e) {
          
alert('error registering device: ' + e);
      
});

ParsePushPlugin.on('receivePN', function(pn){
          
alert('yo i got this push notification:' + JSON.stringify(pn));
      
});

Following above steps, you should be able to successfully start receiving notification from parse.