I'm creating my first application that requires me to update the app based on user input. I've been searching for the best way to send input to me. For example, I have a button that when the user presses I would like to send me the information they've added to a text field. Being new to this, I thought this could be done by simply sending the information to a specified email, but from what I've researched I will need some sort of database. Looking through the Apple Developer Documentation I don't even know which topic I should be looking at to figure this out, any help or direction would be very helpful!
You need to setup a server (using an API) to receive the information.
Usually you will use a webservice to receive the info from the app, although there are other ways to do that.
Sending an email through iOs would require the user to accept the email that is being sent, so doesn't look like a good idea.
Take a look at some options available to create webservices (django rest framework or flask), Google's Firebase also can be handy in this situation, since is only integrating it with your app and storing the data you want to store, with easy integration for Authentication and user tracking.
Related
I'm designing a custom team tab using React that calls third party API, I need after executing the API successfully, user gets notified . What is the best way to achieve this? I used Bot in my project, but not sure how can I call it from my custom tab class. I'm aware of the existence of proactive messaging, is it the only way to do it? If it is, a pointer on how to implement it to a custom tab would be appreciated.
If you're wanting to message the user 1-1 (like in the personal app), then proactive messaging is definitely what you need (inside a Team, there are other options), and considering you have the bot already in place that's perfect. The only thing you might be missing are the details required to send the actual proactive message (the best time to get them is when the bot is first installed by the user). In particular, you need ConversationId and ServiceUrl.
With regards the concept of Proactive Messaging, basically once the bot is installed, and you have the required values, you can -send- the message from any backend code at all. That can include, for example, custom tab's backend api. You need to identify the user, which you can do using the Teams Context (it's not the safest way but it's the easiest), and then look up the values in your own backend store (e.g. database or whatever) to get the ConversationId and ServiceUrl, then just message the user in your backend.
Back in the day Facebook used to let you define URLs that were something like http://facebook.com/send_a_message/user/55/pre_fill/Hi there. When you clicked that link Facebook would open up its Messenger with a "Hi there" message ready to be sent to user 55.
But then Facebook decided that "pre-filling" was bad, and outlawed it across all their APIs. Now there are a bunch of different ways to initiate a Messenger chat session, but they all amount to "start a chat with user 55", not "start a chat with user 55 using some information".
The thing is, I'd like to somehow pass information along with the link. For instance, I might want to have three different links on three different pages, and I want my chatbot to be able to respond differently based on which page the user came from. Since I can't "pre-fill" a message (eg. "Hello, I just came from page A"), I'm wondering if there is any other way to pass auxiliary information.
TLDR
I'm wondering if there's any way I can possibly provide a user with a link that, when they click it, starts up a chat session with my chatbot user, and somehow passes information to it. Using an intermediate proxy (ie. having the link go to my server, and then have my server start the chat somehow) would work, but only if I can associate the information with the user (ie. it doesn't help to know "page A" if I can't associate that with the user once they start chatting).
After researching further it would appear that the answer to my question is no: there is currently no way to pass-along supplemental information.
But here's the good news: when I filed a bug about this (which it turns out I should have filed as a feature request, sorry Facebook) I got a response saying something to the effect of "we couldn't tell you that we are currently developing this, even if we were", which I'm going to optimistically choose to interpret as a sign hope means that this functionality may be coming in the future.
I am faced with a rather strange request and there isn't much material online tackling that.
I am building a web app on GAE ... front end, back end, datastore, blob store, user accounts, the whole nine yards ...
Part of the requirements is to have a user communication system, (users sending messages to each other, just like Facebook) as user emails are not to be shared among other users, and the web app shall only send emails to the user sign up email strictly for security and administration purposes, and wont flood their inbox with notifications like some websites do.
I have narrowed narrowed it down to 4 options
Option 1:
Reinvent the wheel - Build this whole system form scratch on the Datastore and Blob store. However, not only is it expensive, but also I am not gonna go through all of that (just saying honestly)
Option 2:
Build a bouncing system ... User A sends message to app ... app bounces email to User B. Not very Elegant, impossible to create threads and conversations, eats up app Mail Quota used for Marketing and what not.
Option 3:
Host My own Email server onsite. Patch an API servlet and run the whole show through API. Very valid, except that the client doesn't want anything on site, and I wont be around to maintain it for him.
Option 4:(Best option if someone helps out)
Implement option 3 on a 3rd party email provider. Which brings us to the question, is there any respectable email provider that allows account sign up through API ?? I need to create a shadow email account on a 3rd party server(that the user will never know it exists) every time someone makes an account on my app. Then store all emails and their generated passwords in the Datastore, and when user logs in my web app, web app logs in 3rd party server, retrieves messages and serves it. When he wants to send a message, web app gets the message, sends an email using API as well. If someone knows how to do that on Gmail, I would be eternally grateful (but I highly doubt google allows that)
Note
I can implement the whole setup on xmpp/Jabber servers as well but these free servers keep changing all the time and they change their configurations ... bottom line they are not very reliable.
Thanks a lot guys !! I really appreciate any feed back and if you have any other suggestions please don't hesitate !! This is by no means a solid plan yet.
I am somewhat new to programming, have some experience with VBA, but thats it. I am learning Filemaker at the moment and I am getting along quite nicely. I want to let FM automaticly enter certain appointments and reminders into my google calendar.
Now, I know that the calendar has an API, and I know that that API is the interface with which I can communicate with it. But I am lacking a step in my knowledge ladder, because the documentation is thoroughly confusing. I need to know what to use, in order to tell the calendar what to enter where. Is it like some compound url I construct? How do I login?
These are all questions that pop up. I don't expect you to answer those, but rather if you can point me to the right tutorials I can read to get this knowledge.
I hope I didn't burden you guys too much.
thx in advance
I'm one of the authors of Zulu, a product we built specifically to sync FileMaker to Google Calendar, using a bi-directional sync. You can also turn Zulu into your own CalDAV server if you want to go that route.
Good luck!
Don't take this wrong but you may be biting off too much. I have been programming for 30 years and it took me a couple of days to gather the information needed to interact with the Google APIs (the OAuth2 authentication can be really confusing at first).
My sugestion would be to look at importing calendars into Google Calendars using either CSV (https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/45656) or ICS (https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/45656) format. You should be able to generate those formats with a little bit of Filemaker scripting.
But since you asked:
You need the OAUTH2 offline access, with a refresh token you would
store somewhere.
You will use the refresh token to get an auth token
You will make requests using HTTPS GETS or POSTS (see the Calendar
API explorer), with the auth token in the Authorization header.
Since there is no Google Calendar API for FileMaker :-), you would
have to know some details of the HTTP protocol to send a properly
formatted request, you will be working at a lower level than you
would be if using a Python, Java or .NET library.
You will get back
JSON responses which you will have to parse.
There are a couple of ways you can try to do this quickly:
Use Zapier (http://zpr.io/VhK - affiliate link) to create a webhook, then use a hidden webviewer in FileMaker to create the event. Try this as an example: http://zpr.io/fqg7
Use a plug-in, like this one https://www.feedzon.com/products/fmgcal/. I've never used that particular one before, but it looks fairly straightforward.
If you want to go whole-hog, it is also possible to use scripts in FileMaker to write to the Google Calendar API, but it's a lot more work. The plugin is probably the easiest route to go.
If you don't want to use a plugin, I would recommend starting with a Zapier webhook, as it greatly simplifies the work needed to hook into the Google Calendar API.
I want to build an app whose core functionality is essentially the same as Pinger and other free SMS apps - that is, it needs to allow for texting without going through your phone's service provider by sending the data over the web. But I can't find any APIs or explanations as to how this is accomplished.
Pinger assigns you a phone number to use, which I assume means it must also run its own SMS gateways. But I don't know how to do either of these things (assign valid phone number and create SMS gateways), or whether I can even do them on my own and purely programatically. Does anybody know where I can find this information?
TL;DR: Essentially, I need to know how to create my own Pinger/free SMS app. My app will be different, but will employ the same underlying functionality.
SMS messages are not free to send and this is why Pinger's business model is based on advertising when you send and receive their messages, see http://www.pinger.com/content/advertise.html
In order to do this yourself you would need to work with one of the companies that offers a SMS gateway. You could use a whole bunch of different providers, take a look at this post I previously made with some of them How to send SMS programatically in a professional and reliable way?
I also add, you would need to work out a suitable business model to pay for the SMS messages you plan to send :-).