Hacker News Reader

Comment by codegladiator | Hacker News Reader

What exactly is new in this ? Isn't this what Android and iOS notification services do ? And all messaging services ? What did I miss

View on HN

It's a mobile app that polls an endpoint for json, after the user configures it (seemingly with a QR code), that's all. There's no middle-man server, and it's also not push.

Neat idea, low barrier to entry. Can't tell from docs how authz/authn are handled.

And who maintains the message queue until the client pools next(the service provided by these middle-man servers) ? And what about message by user identifier ?

And client app will eat my battery because one more service is constantly polling now ?

You can configure the refresh interval in the service response: https://refl.me/docs

Would be nice if you could override this client side as well.

The difference between push and pull.

Push notifications function on the principle that when a state change happens, the notification is pushed to the device.

Pull notification is when device polls some service for data, detects change, and then emits notification if change has occurred.

There are benefits and drawbacks to both.

True enough, this is in concept the very same as Apple Push Notification (APN) service. Difference is that you are in charge of the server side and handle all the security and uptime yourself. Very cool idea, simple enough to generate a lot of really cool projects.

No. APNS works differently and iOS devices do not poll Apple's server at frequent intervals. I explained it here [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21338838

Any web service can integrate with it as long as it responds with a JSON object that adheres to the specification.

It is genius.

Still didn't get the genius part,... This simply keeps polling a list of endpoint and if a new message Id comes, flashes it and stores in the list of flashed messages ? That's all right ?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com