[Question] Behaviour of iBeacon when the app is not running

[chethankumar]

Things work properly when the app is running or in background.
I am able to get the status when the phone enters the region or leaves it.

The problem is that when the app is not running(after killing it/after reboot ), I don't get any status. It doesn't detect anything.
Is this expected or is there any setting that I need to use to get the status when the app is not running.

[petermetz]

I haven't done my own research on this topic yet, but others did so, in case you haven't yet found these: SO Topic 1, SO Topic 2, Radius Networks Research

Based on those my key takeaways are as follows:

• Upgrade to iOS 7.1.x if you haven't yet done so, Apple improved the usability of the iBeacon related APIs there, as far as I remember.
• Take your time when testing, sometimes stuff just takes a lot of time, as stated by others.
• For me personally it seems that you just cannot count on things to work with a guaranteed latency yet, but I would expect later versions of iOS/iDevices to improve on that.

Sorry that I couldn't provide a more convincing answer to this one, if you have any other questions feel free to ask.

Peter

[julienandre]

Hi,

Thank you for this plugin that works perfectly for me when app is launched.

But I tried to throw a notification when the app is in background or closed as it seems possible with the iOS7.1 , I added cordova-plugin-local-notifications to throw notification when iBeacon on sight :

window.plugin.notification.local.add({ message: 'BEACON1!'+beacon1_seen.count });

And forced these notification parameters into CDVIBeacon.m file :

398. beaconRegion.notifyOnEntry = true;  
399. beaconRegion.notifyOnExit = true; 
400. beaconRegion.notifyEntryStateOnDisplay= true;

It results in notifications thrown when i switch ipad off then on (so notifyEntryStateOnDisplay works well), but none when ipad is launched and application in background or off...

As I'm new to cordova application, i wondered if i've done something wrong or if i missed a step ?

Is it also possible to directly launch the closed application from an iBeacon on sight, using this plugin ?

Thank you very much for these answers.

[petermetz]

Hi @julienandre

As I recently discovered, the reliability of callbacks for region monitoring (circular and beacon regions) are not perfect at the moment, when it comes to closed apps.

The version 2 branch will make a significant improvement on this, but is yet incomplete.
I'd suggest waiting for the release of the version 2 (should happen in a week or two) and then doing your tests again.

[petermetz]

The version 2 branch is now released, and it should solve this issue with the new callback mechanism between the native layer and the DOM.

Please feel free to reopen this if any issues arise after upgrading to the version branch.

Important note: Version 2 significantly changes the API surface by being based on promises as the return values.