Introducing APNS2 Support for Push Notifications with PubNub

PubNub’s support for Apple’s HTTP/2-based Push Notification Service (APNS) has now moved into General Availability. All PubNub customers can now take advantage of the speed, simplicity and flexibility of the vastly improved Apple service for their live notifications needs. Developers will no longer be slowed down by complicated certificate setup and maintenance required by the older version of APNS, and they won’t need to maintain multiple PubNub key setups in order to send push notifications to different downstream iOS-based applications. In other words, managing push notifications to Apple devices with PubNub just got a whole lot simpler.

Of course, developers will benefit as well from improved speed and throughput knowing that the PubNub service itself is taking advantage of all of the benefits of streamlined connectivity that APNS offers.

Developer Problems Before APNS2

Certificates are cumbersome for developers to create and maintain, especially since one has to be created for every app — and they expire so there’s a heavy maintenance burden. With PubNub, it meant developers would have to manage multiple certs and PubNub keys. You can imagine the headache.

Ideally, you’d want a single auth entity that allows you to manage downstream connections for multiple apps as long as they associate with your developer identity. This is what APNS2 from Apple allows you to do, and we are proud to be supporting this capability for our developers.

A Better Developer Experience

With the new APNS2 support from PubNub, developers can now easily push to multiple apps while managing only a single token and a single PubNub key, creating a smoother experience and removing the maintenance stress and burden associated with the previous implementation.

What does this support mean for you?

• It’s simpler to push a single notification to multiple apps as opposed to a different push for each app - you avoid the need for complex design patterns required to meet customer and regulatory needs
• There are fewer constraints on the amount of data you can send in a push notification - you can now send more or detailed information to a user at once
• It’s much easier to configure push connections using tokens instead of certificates - get fewer errors, avoid cert expiration, lower your costs, and enable pushing to multiple apps
• You get faster performance in the form of reduced latency and higher throughput on account of more streamlined connectivity between PubNub and APNS - experience better performance without lifting a finger

How to Start Using APNS2 with PubNub

I’m new to notifications using APNS on PubNub

Great! You have nothing to worry about. By default, when you work with APNS and PubNub, you’ll be working with APNS2. You’ll have a single token from Apple and a single key from PubNub and now you can develop your notifications features just how you expect.

I am currently using APNS1 with PubNub and want to move to APNS2

APNS1 style certificates are no longer supported for new customer use cases, i.e. applications and keysets. All new keysets created will support APNS2 only.

If you are using APNS1 certificates and wish to create a new keyset for a separate application, you will not be able to do so. If you are in this situation, please contact PubNub Support.

In addition, PubNub is not supporting the co-existence of APNS1 and APNS2 on the same keyset. In order to utilize APNS2, you must use a new keyset if you were not part of the Early Adopter program.

I was part of the Early Adopter program for APNS2

If you have the Early Adopter version of APNS2 in use, you’ll need to work with PubNub Support to migrate your keyset to the new version; this is necessary when you want to update the token associated with the keyset.

Migration is only required for Early Adopter customers who wish to update the APNS2 configuration for existing keysets. You’ll need to contact PubNub Support and we’ll initiate an internal process for data migration for you. This process may take a few days from end to end.