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APN on Rails has a new Home.

Quite often I get asked why don’t I blog more? Why don’t I tweet more? Why don’t I _fill in the blank_ more. The answer is I’m a busy man. I’m the CTO for a pre-funding startup, www.shortbord.com, the father of two adorable little boys, the lead singer of a Boston-based band, www.myspace.com/colawarvets, and that’s just the big stuff! I have to prioritize what I can spend my time on, and unfortunately some of my open source projects are the first to get the ax.

Why do the open source projects always seem to get the ax? Well, let me start by saying that they don’t always get the ax, but they certainly jump to the top of the list. There are certain libraries I’ve written, cachetastic and configatron, are the two most prominent that I use day in and day out. They will always get the love the deserve. Then there are projects like APN on Rails. I wrote it because I had an iPhone app (no longer available) that I wanted notifications for, and there was nothing else available for Ruby to do the job. The plugin took off like crazy and I was overwhelmed with patches, questions, bugs, etc… That was great, and I was happy to help, for a time, but alas, I haven’t written an iPhone app for ages, and I just don’t have time to maintain a plugin that I wasn’t even using.

A while ago I realized that the best thing for APN on Rails, myself, and for the community was to find someone to take over the project so that it got the love it deserved. I put out the call and the good folks over at PRX (Public Radio Exchange) answered the call. The folks at PRX have written some great iPhone apps, including the very popular “This American Life” app.

So I’m happy to announce that the new official home for APN on Rails is now at: http://github.com/PRX/apn_on_rails. I ask that you continue to show the same support to PRX that you have shown to me over the life of this plugin.

Again, thank you to everyone, and thank you to Rebecca Nesson and the folks over at PRX for picking up the project and giving it renewed life.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 at 10:46 am and is filed under General, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

3 Responses to “APN on Rails has a new Home.”

  1. Ricardo Says:
    March 31st, 2010 at 12:48 pm

    Hi!

    I didn’t try APN at the moment. I wonder if someone uses APN in real life projects, were reliability is important. Is there any case where you lost notifications?

    What do you think? Any example?

    Thank you very much for your help.

  2. Mark Bates Says:
    March 31st, 2010 at 12:54 pm

    Ricardo, APN is as about as reliable as it can be. Push notifications are not guaranteed by Apple to actually be delivered, so keep that in mind when you’re developing your app. If the user has their phone turned off or they don’t have reception at that time the notification will most likely never be delivered. Don’t confuse push notifications with SMS. I wouldn’t trust them to tell me something life critical.

  3. Ricardo Says:
    April 2nd, 2010 at 10:16 am

    Thanks Mark for reply.

    I read this on Apple docs:

    “You should regularly connect with the feedback web server and fetch the current list of those devices that have repeatedly reported failed-delivery attempts. Then you should cease sending notifications to the devices associated with those applications. See “The Feedback Service” for more information.”

    http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/RemoteNotificationsPG/CommunicatingWIthAPS/CommunicatingWIthAPS.html

    My question is: Does your program take cares of this “feedback server”?

    By the way, do you know any program on the appstore that uses your APN gem?

    Thanks for your program.