Microsoft Push Notification Service (commonly referred to as MPNS) is a mobile service developed by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

. It allows for developers to send push data from servers to

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applications. The MPNS is natively supported on applications that target the

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Operating System. Microsoft announced the

Windows Notification Service Windows Push Notification Service (commonly referred to as Windows Notification Service or WNS) is a notification service developed by Microsoft for all devices running Microsoft Windows platforms. It allows for developers to send push data ("t ...

for

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and

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in 2011, effectively replacing the MPNS with this service. The MPNS can be used on applications that are installed on

if the source code is migrated to a

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application, modified to target

, and was already registered to use the MPNS before the upgrade.

Technical details

Implementation

The MPNS is natively designed for use with

applications that implement the service. It allows for developers to send toast notifications, as well as update the tile image and flip notification text on the application's Windows Metro start screen tile. This is accomplished by developers by sending POST messages to the MPNS server network with the request and relevant content. A user typically must allow for data or notifications to be received before an application will register with the MPNS for notification data. The MPNS can be implemented to send notification data using an encrypted channel if the developer purchases an

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certificate from a third-party provider and uploads its private key and certificate data to their Microsoft Developer Portal account. Otherwise, the MPNS can be implemented to send notification data using an unencrypted channel. Applications that utilize unencrypted channels have rate and size limitations with all notification requests and content that is updated or displayed to the device. These limits can be lifted by purchasing an

certificate and switching to utilize MPNS encryption.

Architecture

The MPNS consists of servers and internal interfaces that maintain and store ''Channel URI Identifiers'' and device information, authenticate POST requests received from developer servers, and enqueue and deliver requested data to mobile devices. When an application registers for data and notifications, it receives a unique ''Channel URI Identifiers'' from the MPNS network. This identifier is used by the application developer's third-party server to reference the device that the particular data delivery request will be sent to. After the mobile device receives its ''Channel URI Identifier'', it is then sent to the developer's server to be stored. When a server sends a POST message to the MPNS network for data delivery, the ''Channel URI Identifier'' is included within the message payload, along with the data to deliver, and any parameter options specified. The MPNS network will authenticate the identifier, and enqueue the data for delivery to the mobile device.

References

External links

*{{official website, https://dev.windows.com/en-us Windows technology .NET Push technology Windows APIs