Push notifications in a local network

Question

I need to implement Push Notifications for Android and iOS using my own server in a local network with no Internet access. More precisely, my users will have a mobile app (Android and iOS) which will connect to a local Server through a wireless network. This network won't have any Internet connection. The server will need to send push notifications to the connected devices when some concrete events happen.

I'm using Django on the server side.

I've been researching a bit and it looks like using XMPP would be a neat solution. Thus I guess I need an XMPP Server to communicate with the mobile devices. I've seen several alternatives for the server side, though I don't understand completely what I need exactly. There are some XMPP servers such as Openfire and SleekXMPP. I'm not really sure what are they for. Should I choose one of them or use both?

On the other side, which alternatives are there in the app side?

What I need basically is some guidance on which technologies to choose and some references.

Answer 1

First if you decide with the XMPP protocol .. you can use any of the servers you mentioned and use any library for the mobile Smack for example for android, the mobile library will automatically update you with events using listeners .. it's a software layer that handles notifications.

Second if you want to implement it manually .. you'll have a service running on the mobile device that checks for updates periodically by requesting them from server.

Third The actual push notifications need to be registered over the internet, android for example need to communicate with Google Cloud Messaging.