Windows Runtime

How to implement a simple notification system in MVVM Windows 8.1 Universal apps

screenshot_07042015_152814

If your app performs actions, you most probably want to add also some confirmation if an action has finished. There are some ways to do this, like using local toast notifications or MessageDialogs. While I was working on Voices Admin v2, which is a universal app, I came along with a helper to simplify using local toast notifications. However, there came the point, where I got annoyed by the sound of these, and I looked into possible ways to replace them. My solution is a simple notification system, that uses the MVVM Light Messenger.

The first thing I did was adding a new property that broadcasts its PropertyChangedMessage to my ExtendedViewModelBase (which inherits from the MVVM Light ViewModelBase). This simplifies setting the notification text across multiple ViewModels as I don’t need to create a property in every ViewModel of my app:

public class ExtendedViewModelBase : ViewModelBase
    {
        public ExtendedViewModelBase()
        {
            
        }


        /// <summary>
        /// The <see cref="NotificationText" /> property's name.
        /// </summary>
        public const string NotificationTextPropertyName = "NotificationText";

        private string _notificationText = string.Empty;

        /// <summary>
        /// Sets and gets the NotificationText property.
        /// Changes to that property's value raise the PropertyChanged event. 
        /// This property's value is broadcasted by the MessengerInstance when it changes.
        /// </summary>
        public string NotificationText
        {
            get
            {
                return  _notificationText = string.Empty;
            }
            set
            {
                Set(() => NotificationText, ref _notificationText, value, true);
            }
        }
   }

The second step is to create the possibility to bind this into my view. I am using a custom PageBase class to simplify this. For those binding purposes it is common to add a DependencyProperty, and this is exactly what I did:

/// <summary>
        /// global property to bind the notification text against
        /// </summary>
        public static readonly DependencyProperty AppNotificationTextProperty = DependencyProperty.Register(
            "AppNotificationText", typeof (string), typeof (PageBase), new PropertyMetadata(string.Empty, (s, e) =>
            {
                var current = s as PageBase;

                if (current == null)
                {
                    return;
                }

                current.CheckifNotificationMessageIsNeeded(s);
            }));

        /// <summary>
        /// gets or sets the AppNotificationText
        /// </summary>
        public string AppNotificationText
        {
            get { return (string)GetValue(AppNotificationTextProperty); }
            set { SetValue(AppNotificationTextProperty, value); }}

You may have noticed that I hooked up into the PropertyChangedCallback of the DependecyProperty, which passes the execution to an separate method. Before we’ll have a look on that method, we need to add two private members to my PageBase: one for a StackPanel (mainly to set the Background color) and another one for Textblock. This is needed because this is the visible part of the notification. In the constructor of my PageBase class, I am filling them with live and connect them together:

            //instantiate and create StackPanel and TextBlock
            //you can put anything you want in the panel
            _panel = new StackPanel()
            {
                Background = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Blue),
                Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed,
            };

            _textBlock = new TextBlock()
            {
                FontSize = 20,
                Margin = new Thickness(39, 10, 10, 10),
                TextAlignment = TextAlignment.Center
            };
            _panel.Children.Add(_textBlock);

The next thing we need to do is the FindChildren<T> helper method, which I took from the MSDN docs:

        /// <summary>
        /// Gets a list of DependencyObjects from the Visual Tree
        /// </summary>
        /// <typeparam name="T">the type of the desired object</typeparam>
        /// <param name="results">List of children</param>
        /// <param name="startNode">the DependencyObject to start the search with</param>
        public static void FindChildren<T>(List<T> results, DependencyObject startNode) where T : DependencyObject
        {
            int count = VisualTreeHelper.GetChildrenCount(startNode);
            for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)
            {
                var current = VisualTreeHelper.GetChild(startNode, i);
                if ((current.GetType()) == typeof(T) || (current.GetType().GetTypeInfo().IsSubclassOf(typeof(T))))
                {
                    T asType = (T)current;
                    results.Add(asType);
                }
                FindChildren<T>(results, current);
            }
         }

This helper enables us to find the top level grid, where we will add the StackPanel and control its visibilty and the TextBlock’s text. Which we are doing with the CheckifNotificationMessageIsNeeded() method:

        /// <summary>
        /// handles the visibility of the notification
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="currentDependencyObject">the primary depenedency object to start with</param>
        private void CheckifNotificationMessageIsNeeded(DependencyObject currentDependencyObject)
        {
            if (currentDependencyObject == null) return;

            var children = new List<DependencyObject>();
            FindChildren(children, currentDependencyObject);
            if (children.Count == 0) return;

            var rootGrid = (Grid)children.FirstOrDefault(i => i.GetType() == typeof(Grid));

            if (rootGrid != null)

                if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(AppNotificationText))
                {
                    if (!rootGrid.Children.Contains(_panel))
                    {
                        rootGrid.RowDefinitions.Add(new RowDefinition() {Height = new GridLength(_panel.ActualHeight, GridUnitType.Auto)});
                        _panel.SetValue(Grid.RowProperty, rootGrid.RowDefinitions.Count);

                        rootGrid.Children.Add(_panel);
                    }

                    _textBlock.Text = AppNotificationText;
                    _panel.Visibility = Visibility.Visible;
                }
                else if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(AppNotificationText))
                {
                    _textBlock.Text = string.Empty;
                    _panel.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed;
                }
        }

Once we have the rootGrid on our Page, we are adding a new Row, set the StackPanel’s Grid.Row property to that and finally add the StackPanel to the Grid’s Children – but only if it does not exist already. No everytime the AppNotificationText property changes, the visibility of the StackPanel changes accordingly. Same counts for the TextBlock’s text. That’s all we need to do in the PageBase class.

The final bits of code we have to add are in the MainViewModel. I am using the MainViewModel as a kind of root ViewModel, which controls values and actions that are needed across multiple ViewModels. If you do not use it in the same way, you might need to write that code in all of your ViewModels where you want to use the notifications. The biggest advantage of my way is that the notification system (and other things) also works across pages.

The first thing we need is of course a property for the notification Text, which we will use to bind against on all pages where we want to use the notification system:

        /// <summary>
        /// The <see cref="GlobalNotificationText" /> property's name.
        /// </summary>
        public const string GlobalNotificationTextPropertyName = "GlobalNotificationText";

        private string _globalNotificationText = string.Empty;

        /// <summary>
        /// Sets and gets the GlobalNotificationText property.
        /// Changes to that property's value raise the PropertyChanged event. 
        /// </summary>
        public string GlobalNotificationText
        {
            get
            {
                return _globalNotificationText;
            }
            set
            {
                Set(() => GlobalNotificationText, ref _globalNotificationText, value);
            }
        }

Now we have this, we are hooking into the MVVM Messenger to catch the broadcasted NotificationText’s PropertyChangedMessage:

            Messenger.Default.Register<PropertyChangedMessage<string>>(this, message =>
            {
                if (message.PropertyName == ExtendedViewModelBase.NotificationTextPropertyName)
                {
                }
             });

If we would stop here, you would need to find a good point to set the NotificationText (and/or the GlobalNotificationText) property back to an empty string. This can be like the search a needle in the hay, believe me. That’s why I am giving every notification 5 seconds to be displayed, and the I am resetting the GlobalNotificationText  property in my MainViewModel automatically. To achieve this goal, I am using a simple DispatcherTimer with an Interval of 1 second:

            _notificationTimer = new DispatcherTimer() { Interval = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 1) };

DispatcherTimer has a Tick event, which fires every time a Tick happened. In our case, it fires every second. Hooking up into this event is essential, so add this line of code and let Visual Studio create the handler for you:

//in constructor:       
_notificationTimer.Tick += _notificationTimer_Tick;

//generated handler:
        private void _notificationTimer_Tick(object sender, object e)
        {
        }

Inside the Tick event handler, I am counting the ticks (using a private member in my MainViewModel). Once the timer passed 5 seconds, I am stopping the DispatcherTimer, reset the counter and finally set the GlobalNotificationText  property back to empty, which causes the notification to disappear:

            _notificationTimerElapsedSeconds++;

            if (_notificationTimerElapsedSeconds > 5)
            {
                _notificationTimer.Stop();
                _notificationTimerElapsedSeconds = 0;
                GlobalNotificationText = string.Empty;
            }

Of course we also need to start the DispatcherTimer. The perfect time for this is within the handler of the received PropertyChangedMessage we added earlier:

            //register for the global NotificationText PropertyChangedMessage from all VMs that derive from ExtendenViewModelBase
            Messenger.Default.Register<PropertyChangedMessage<string>>(this, message =>
            {
                if (message.PropertyName == ExtendedViewModelBase.NotificationTextPropertyName)
                {
                    if (!_notificationTimer.IsEnabled)
                    {
                        _notificationTimer.Start();
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        _notificationTimerElapsedSeconds = 0;
                    }

                    GlobalNotificationText = message.NewValue;
                }
            });

I am just checking if the DispatcherTimer is not yet enabled (= running) and start the timer in this case. If it is already running, I am just resetting my counter property to make sure that the notification is visible for 5 seconds again.

That’s it. Your MVVM (Light) app has now a simple and not so annoying notification system. It also provides the same experience across both platforms. There are sure ways to improve this here and there, that’s why I put up a sample to play around and contribute to on my Github account.

As always, I hope this post is helpful for some of you.

Happy coding!

Posted by msicc in Archive, 0 comments

How to update a live tile in a background task with web data on Windows 8.1

scheduledtaskWindows

Like I wrote in my last post, I recently finished a PCL project with a Windows Phone and a Windows 8.1 app. Like the Windows Phone version, also the Windows 8.1 app has a live tile that fetches the same data from WordPress.

Taking advantage of our PCL solution structure, we are able to reuse the JSON data class from our PCL.

However, there are a few things that differ from the Windows Phone background agent.

First, we need to add a new project to our solution. In the new project dialog, select ‘Windows Runtime Component’ in the C# Windows Store section.

To make it a background task, implement the interface IBackgroundTask to the generated class in our Runtime component. In order to make it doing some work, we are going to add the ‘Run’-method that will start our background agent.

Here we are already with the first difference. The Windows Runtime does not support direct async Tasks of type string (I fetch all articles via HttpClient in an async task that returns the JSON string). That’s why we need to wrap it in an IAsyncOperation. To do this, add a new sealed class to your Windows Runtime background agent project.

Here is how the code for the IAyncOperation:

        public IAsyncOperation<string> GetLastPostJsonString(string url)
        {
            try
            {
                return AsyncInfo.Run((System.Threading.CancellationToken ct) => GetInternal(url));
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                Debug.WriteLine(ex.ToString());
            }
            return null;
        }

        private static async Task<string> GetInternal(string url)
        {
            try
            {
                HttpClient getJsonStringClient = new HttpClient();
                getJsonStringClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.IfModifiedSince = DateTime.Now;

                var response = await getJsonStringClient.GetAsync(url);
                var JsonString = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
                return JsonString;
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                Debug.WriteLine(ex.ToString());
            }
            return null;
        }

Let me explain the code. The IAsyncOperation starts and returns the string of our async Task<string>.  To achieve this, we need to start another async Run that delegates our Task<string> result to the main background task. Unlike a direct HttpClient call, we are not able to save the string directly to an string object. Instead, we need to read the stream.

I highly recommend to wrap this all in try/catch blocks to prevent any crashes of your app.

Let’s go back to our main background task class. Now we are able to fetch the JSON string from web service, we finally can start to implement the Run() method that will actually update our live tiles:

       public async void Run(IBackgroundTaskInstance taskInstance)
       {
           try
           {
               BackgroundTaskDeferral deferral = taskInstance.GetDeferral();

               PostfetcherForTileUpdate fetchJsonString = new PostfetcherForTileUpdate();

               Constants.latestPostsForLiveTileFromWordPressDotComResultString = await fetchJsonString.GetLastPostJsonString(Constants.GetLatestPostsForLiveTileFromWordPressDotComUriString);

               );

               UpdateTile();

               deferral.Complete();
           }
           catch (Exception ex)
           {
               Debug.WriteLine(ex.ToString());
           }
       }

The Run method needs to implement the Interface for IBackgroundTaskInstance. To inform the OS that our background agent may do work after the Run has returned data, we need to use the GetDeferral() method. If we would do that, it may happen that the task will be closed before all action has taken place.

After getting the JSON String from the IAsyncOperation, we can now write it to an object, call our UpdateTile() method and tell the system that our deferral is completed.

Within the UpdateTile() method, we are going to deserialize the JSON String and update our live tile. There are a lot of considerations for the live tiles in Windows 8 and 8.1, make sure you have read the guidelines for tiles and badges on MSDN. Make also sure you check the tile template catalogue to choose the right templates for your app.

Let’s have a look at the UpdateTile() code:

        private static void UpdateTile()
        {
            try
            {
                //create a new Tile updater and allow it to be added to the notification queue
                var updater = TileUpdateManager.CreateTileUpdaterForApplication();
                updater.EnableNotificationQueue(true);
                updater.Clear();

        //deserialize the JSON string
                var LatestPostFromWordpress = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<json_data_class_Posts.Posts>(Constants.latestPostsForLiveTileFromWordPressDotComResultString);

        //fill in the Tile Templates
                foreach (var item in LatestPostFromWordpress.posts)
                {
            //supporting both Medium and Wide tiles
                    XmlDocument WidetileXML = TileUpdateManager.GetTemplateContent(TileTemplateType.TileWide310x150PeekImage04);
                    XmlDocument SquareTileXML = TileUpdateManager.GetTemplateContent(TileTemplateType.TileSquare150x150PeekImageAndText04);

            //setting the text on our tiles
                    var title = item.title;
                    WidetileXML.GetElementsByTagName("text")[0].InnerText = title;
                    SquareTileXML.GetElementsByTagName("text")[0].InnerText = title;

            //providing the remote image source 
            //if not empty:
                    if (item.featured_image != string.Empty)
                    {
                        XmlNodeList tileImageAttributes = SquareTileXML.GetElementsByTagName("image");
                        ((XmlElement)tileImageAttributes[0]).SetAttribute("src", item.featured_image);
                        ((XmlElement)tileImageAttributes[0]).SetAttribute("alt", "no image");

                        XmlNodeList tileWideImageAttributes = WidetileXML.GetElementsByTagName("image");
                        ((XmlElement)tileWideImageAttributes[0]).SetAttribute("src", item.featured_image);
                        ((XmlElement)tileWideImageAttributes[0]).SetAttribute("alt", "no image");
                    }
            //if empty:
                    else if (item.featured_image == string.Empty)
                    {
                        XmlNodeList tileImageAttributes = WidetileXML.GetElementsByTagName("image");
            //this image has to be in the main Windows 8.1 project, not in the background task!
                        ((XmlElement)tileImageAttributes[0]).SetAttribute("src", "ms-appx:///Images/NoImgPlaceholderMedium.png");
                        ((XmlElement)tileImageAttributes[0]).SetAttribute("alt", "no image");

                        XmlNodeList tileWideImageAttributes = WidetileXML.GetElementsByTagName("image");
            //this image has to be in the main Windows 8.1 project, not in the background task!
                        ((XmlElement)tileWideImageAttributes[0]).SetAttribute("src", "ms-appx:///Images/NoImgPlaceholderWide.png");
                        ((XmlElement)tileWideImageAttributes[0]).SetAttribute("alt", "no image");
                    }

            //perform the update of our live tiles
                    updater.Update(new TileNotification(WidetileXML));
                    updater.Update(new TileNotification(SquareTileXML));
                }
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                Debug.WriteLine(ex.ToString());
            }
        }

To make the background task updating our tile, we need to use the TileUpdateManager class. As we are updating our main tile, we are using the CreateTileUpdaterForApplication() method. To make sure our tile is able to queue our update request, we are setting the EnableNotificationQueue property to true.

After deserializing the JSON string, we fill the Template by using DOM methods. I used the GetElementsByTagName(string) method to find the title and the image ChildNodes in the template. This way, I don’t need to care for the Xml structure.

The title content can be set by using the InnerText property. For providing the images source, we need to go through the NodeList, searching for the image NodeChild and use the SetAttribute() method of the XmlElement class.

With the code above, the tile gets a placeholder image, if the JSON string does not return an url for the  featured image. Important: the placeholder image has to be in your main Windows 8 project, not in the background task project. Make also sure that the image(s) have a unique name and do not use the same file name like your base tile image.

That’s all we need to do in our background task project.

Let’s have a look at our main app project. First, we have to declare our background task to make our app registering for the periodic notifications. Open the Package.appxmanifest of your app and navigate to the ‘Declarations’ tab.

Screenshot (259)

Under ‘Available Declarations’, select ‘Background Tasks’ and ‘Add’.

Screenshot (259)

 

Under ‘Description’ check the ‘Timer’ Option. Make sure you referenced your background task project and add it as ‘Entry Point’.

That’s all that wee need to set up in the first step. Now we are going to write our method to register the background task:

        //needs to be async because of the BackgroundExecutionManager
        public async void RegisterBackgroundTask()
        {
            try
            {
        // calling the BackgroundExecutionManager
        //this performs the message prompt to the user that allows the update of our tiles and the permissions entry
                var backgroundAccessStatus = await BackgroundExecutionManager.RequestAccessAsync();

        //checking if we have access to set up our live tile
        if (backgroundAccessStatus == BackgroundAccessStatus.AllowedMayUseActiveRealTimeConnectivity ||
                    backgroundAccessStatus == BackgroundAccessStatus.AllowedWithAlwaysOnRealTimeConnectivity)
                {
            //unregistering our old task, if there is one                   
            foreach (var task in BackgroundTaskRegistration.AllTasks)
                    {
                        if (task.Value.Name == taskName)
                        {
                            task.Value.Unregister(true);
                        }
                    }

            //building up our new task and registering it
                    BackgroundTaskBuilder taskBuilder = new BackgroundTaskBuilder();
                    taskBuilder.Name = taskName;
                    taskBuilder.TaskEntryPoint = taskEntryPoint;
                    taskBuilder.SetTrigger(new TimeTrigger(60, false));
                    var registration = taskBuilder.Register();
                }
            }
        //catching all exceptions that can happen
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
        //async method used, but wil be marked by VS to be executed synchronously
                var message = new MessageDialog("we were not able to activate the live tile. Please restart the application to try again.");
                message.Title = "Sorry,";
                message.ShowAsync();

            }

        }

We are calling the BackgroundExecutionManager of Windows 8.1. This adds the Permissions dialog on the app’s first run as well as the entry in the settings charm. Only if we are allowed by the user, our tile will be updated.

Unregistering already running tasks and re-adding them is a common practice, which I did also here.

After that, I build up a new background task with the BackgroundTaskBuilder class, referencing to the taskEntryPoint I set up in the Declarations tab before.

Unlike the Windows Phone background agent, we can change the time of the background task. I used 60 minutes for this app. You will need to specify a trigger (minimum of 15 minutes). I tried it without, which lead to an exception.

I am catching all exceptions and display a message to the user here. The method will be marked as executing synchronously, but it will work. The reason is that no async methods are allowed in the catch block.

Like always, I added this to my App.xaml.cs file, as this is set up application wide. To start the task, I just call it in the Application.Launched event. It would also work in the OnWindowCreated event, if you want your Launched event free.

Setting up a background task to update your live tile with data from web is not as easy as on Windows Phone, but with this article you will be able to get started on that.

As always, I hope that this post is helpful for some of you.

Happy coding, everyone!

Posted by msicc in Archive, 1 comment