Sushi

Sushi is a framework to keep data always fresh in your mobile application. With a little bit of code in your mobile application and the upload of a generic cloud function in Parse, when every data you are interested in is saved on server, your mobile application can get it.

Goals:

• only interesting data : client filtering
• network friendly : no request if no interesting data on server
• device (battery) friendly : only active when interesting data available
• no server side development

Setup

1. Create a Parse application
2. Copy your appId and clientKey in the properties file /app/src/main/res/raw/credentials, like this :

parse.appid=0123456789abcdef
parse.clientkey=0123456789abcdef

Under the hood

mobile applications register their topics of interests

The application save object class names to Parse installation object

when data is saved on server, subscribed mobile apps are notified

When an object is saved, a special object is saved on Parse ("SushiUpdates") with the class name of the object. The cloud function send a special push notification to all subscibed mobiles apps. The app wake up when it receive the push notification, and download the new data.

Future Improvements

Sushi is a work in progress, and must not be used as is in a production environnement.

The main fix now is to prevent multiple push to a same mobile app for same class of data if it didn’t already query for the data.

Improvements will be :

• Sync point : the client must query new data since last sync
• Continuous query : add parameters to subscription
• iOS support : use push notification to set a flag, that we use to make or not a request in a "background fetch" mode

Sushi is an open idea, and it can support other triggers too. Some ideas :

• Git : on push, use a hook to synchronize data (can be a good CMS candidate)
• Elastic Search : "percolate" capabilities can be interesting to trigger