UILocalNotifcation custom fire event, or struggle on with NSTimer

Question

I have a state-transition problem with NSTimer, of which I find difficult to keep track of during applicationWillResignActive / applicationDidEnterBackground, according to the context of my app.

I was wondering if it might not be a better idea to utilise UILocalNotification, especially given it's background/inactive firing. However, I wanted to know whether we have the ability to provide a custom method to UILocalNotification, of which does not present a dialog box (would damage the whole point of my app). In effect, i'd like to only make use of the timer-fire capabilities of UILocalNotification, and handle the fire event with my own method which does something very "undialog-friendly"

Have checked the ADC docs and it alludes to the dialog being presented every time.

Any advice you can give on this would be appreciated.

thanks

sc.

Answer 1

The dialog box is presented when your app is in the background. But it is not presented when your app is running - instead your app is free to deal with the notification however it sees fit. So it would be perfectly possible to hook it up to a custom method of your own making.

The main reason for this behaviour is a user may not want to go into your app if it's in the background. Of course, with iOS 5 the notification may not be a dialog box - it could be one of the new notification styles.