WP8 - Scheduled Task Agent for push notifications - windows-phone-8

Question

I'm trying to interface my app with push notifications and the backend developer choose Pusher as notifications provider.
.NET SDK is very messy, untidy and synchronous, which it does not work on WP8, so I rewrote its and it works fine now.
The question is: is a Scheduled Task required for fetch the push notifications and update the tile/toast? Or there are any best method?
I can't change push provider sadly.

Answer 1

You can simply send Tile and Toast push notifications to the phone and they will work even if your app is not running. You do not need background task for that.
Here is sample code that I use in a desktop application to send push notifications to a Windows Phone 8.0:
const String toastTemplate =
"<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?>" +
"<wp:Notification xmlns:wp=\"WPNotification\">" +
"<wp:Toast>" +
"<wp:Text1>{0}</wp:Text1>" +
"<wp:Text2>{1}</wp:Text2>" +
"<wp:Param>{2}</wp:Param>" +
"</wp:Toast>" +
"</wp:Notification>";
String message = String.Format(toastTemplate, "Test", "updated: " + DateTime.Now.ToString(), "/Pages/SyncPage.xaml");
Status = await PushNotifiactionsManager.SendNotification(cfg.PushNotificationUri, message, 2);
public static async Task<string> SendNotification(string pushNotificationUri, string message, short notificationClass)
{
String responseText;
if (message.Length > 3072)
{
responseText = String.Format("The message must be <= 3072 bytes: {0}", message);
}
else
{
HttpClient request = new HttpClient();
// Add message headers.
request.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("X-MessageID", Guid.NewGuid().ToString());
request.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("X-NotificationClass", notificationClass.ToString());
if (notificationClass == 1)
{
request.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("X-WindowsPhone-Target", "token");
}
else if (notificationClass == 2)
{
request.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("X-WindowsPhone-Target", "toast");
}
try
{
// Send the message, and wait for the response.
HttpResponseMessage response = await request.PostAsync(pushNotificationUri, new StringContent(message));
IEnumerable<string> values;
String connectionStatus = String.Empty;
if (response.Headers.TryGetValues("X-DeviceConnectionStatus", out values))
{
connectionStatus = values.First();
}
String subscriptionStatus = String.Empty;
if (response.Headers.TryGetValues("X-SubscriptionStatus", out values))
{
subscriptionStatus = values.First();
}
String notificationStatus = String.Empty;
if (response.Headers.TryGetValues("X-NotificationStatus", out values))
{
notificationStatus = values.First();
}
responseText = String.Format("{0}: {1}, {2}, {3}, {4}",
notificationClass == 1 ? "Tile" :
notificationClass == 2 ? "Toast" : "Raw",
response.StatusCode,
connectionStatus, subscriptionStatus, notificationStatus);
}
catch (WebException ex)
{
responseText = ex.Message;
}
}
return "Notification response: " + responseText;
}