apns-clerk 0.2.0

Python client for Apple Push Notification service (APNs)

Python client for Apple Push Notification service (APNs).

This project is forked from apns-client, as there was a tiny but severe problem with SSL handshake rendering the package to be unusable. For the time being please check for apns-client’s documentation .

Requirements

• six - Python 2 and 3 compatibility library.

• pyOpenSSL - OpenSSL wrapper. Required by standard networking back-end.

Standard library has support for SSL transport. However, it is impossible to use it with certificates provided as a string. We store certificates in database, because we handle different apps on many Celery worker machines. A dirty solution would be to create temporary files, but it is insecure and slow. So, we have decided to use a better OpenSSL wrapper and pyOpenSSL was the easiest to handle. pyOpenSSL is loaded on demand by standard networking back-end. If you use your own back-end, based on some other SSL implementation, then you don’t have to install pyOpenSSL.

Changelog

v0.2.0

Added support for sending multiple pushes with varying payload during one APNs connection, thanks Jon Snyder!

v0.1.2

Removed not needed non ascii character which was causing problems with python < 3

v0.1.1

Imported changes from open apns-client pull requests. Thanks Jason Spafford, zhe li and neetu jain.

v0.1

Forked from apns-client and fixed SSL handshake error caused by Apple’s SSLv3 deprecation

Alternatives

There are many alternatives available. This library differs in the following design decisions:

• Support certificates from strings. We do not distribute certificate files on worker machines, they fetch it from the database when needed. This approach simplifies deployment, upgrades and maintenance.

• Keep connections persistent. An SSL handshaking round is slow. Once connection is established, it should remain open for at least few minutes, waiting for the next batch.

• Support enhanced format. Apple developers have designed a notoriously bad push protocol. They have upgraded it to enhanced version, which makes it possible to detect which messages in the batch have failed.

• Clean pythonic API. No need for lots of classes, long lists of exceptions etc.

• Do not hard-code validation, let APNs fail. This decision makes library a little bit more future proof.

Todo

• [TODO] own documentation for apns-clerk

• [TODO] proper attributions for previous work