Can my iPhone app register to receive push notifications meant for another app?

Question

This may be a pretty basic question, but here goes. I develop an iPhone app that is a third-party client for a popular webapp. This webapp has it's own iPhone app to which it publishes push notifications. Is it possible for my app to register to receive push notificatons Sent by the webapp and intended for the webapp's native iPhone app? Or is this prevented by certificate magic as I suspect?

Answer 1

From the technical point of view, you can register at another server with device token. You just need to know, where to register and what protocol does it use. Still you wouldn't be able to receive notifications, as they are routed depending on the application id, and you can't mimic that.

Answer 2

Apple allow you to have apps with either a generic app ID in the format:

12345678.*

Or an explicit app ID in the format:

12345678.com.myCompanyName.myAppName

However, they only allow applications with explicit app IDs to register for APN (Apple Push Notification) Service. Therefore it is not possible for more than one specific iPhone app to receive the same notification.

As Farcaller says, this is not a technical limitation but an imposed one.

Hope that helps