SDK-324 - Updated way of handling notifications to not use AsyncTask by franco-zalamena-iterable · Pull Request #981 · Iterable/iterable-android-sdk

franco-zalamena-iterable · 2026-01-26T14:27:15Z

🔹 Jira Ticket(s) if any

SDK-324

✏️ Description

Migrates push notification handling from the deprecated AsyncTask to Android's WorkManager with expedited work support.

Why

AsyncTask was deprecated in API 30. Firebase and Android documentation explicitly recommend WorkManager for processing FCM messages:

"you should avoid long-running tasks (such as fetching images from a server to display in a notification) in onMessageReceived and instead schedule a task using WorkManager to handle any tasks that might take more than a couple of seconds to complete." - Firebase FCM docs

"If processing of the message payload takes longer than a few seconds, you should make sure that the processing continues in a valid process lifecycle. If you don't make sure this occurs, background execution limits may cause processing to be paused or terminated before the task completes, which can result in delayed or missing user notifications." - Firebase FCM docs

"Start an expedited job using the Android WorkManager to ensure that your high priority notification gets prioritized processing time to ensure your notification rendering runs to completion." - Firebase Blog

"In most cases, your best option for running background tasks is to use WorkManager." - Android Background Tasks

How

IterableFirebaseMessagingService - replaced AsyncTask execution with enqueueNotificationWork(), which schedules an expedited OneTimeWorkRequest via WorkManager. Includes a fallback that posts directly if scheduling fails.
IterableNotificationWorkScheduler (new) - schedules expedited work with OutOfQuotaPolicy.RUN_AS_NON_EXPEDITED_WORK_REQUEST, ensuring notifications are always processed even when quota is exhausted.
IterableNotificationWorker (new) - Worker subclass that deserializes notification data, builds the notification, and posts it. Overrides getForegroundInfo() for pre-Android 12 compatibility.
IterableNotificationHelper - added null-safety checks on extras parameter.

Since minSdkVersion is 21, devices running Android 5–11 require getForegroundInfo() to avoid IllegalStateException when running expedited work:

"Failing to implement the corresponding getForegroundInfo method can lead to runtime crashes when calling setExpedited on older platform versions." - Android WorkManager docs

Dependencies

androidx.work:work-runtime:2.9.0
androidx.work:work-testing:2.9.0 (test only)

iterableapi/src/main/java/com/iterable/iterableapi/IterableFirebaseMessagingService.java

davidtruong

Please remove unnecessary logic for ghost silent notifications from the NotificationWorker.

davidtruong · 2026-02-17T14:05:57Z

iterableapi/src/main/java/com/iterable/iterableapi/IterableFirebaseMessagingService.java


-        Bundle extras = IterableNotificationHelper.mapToBundle(messageData);
-        return IterableNotificationHelper.isGhostPush(extras);
+    private static void enqueueNotificationWork(@NonNull final Context context, @NonNull final Bundle extras, boolean isGhostPush) {


Can remove the isGhostPush boolean here since notifications only get queued for non ghost push notifications.

davidtruong · 2026-02-17T14:09:15Z

iterableapi/src/main/java/com/iterable/iterableapi/IterableFirebaseMessagingService.java

+ * to comply with Firebase best practices. This class is kept for backwards compatibility only.
+ */
+@Deprecated
 class IterableNotificationManager extends AsyncTask<IterableNotificationBuilder, Void, Void> {


Do we still need this deprecated class? Is it even visible to be used by customers?

davidtruong · 2026-02-17T14:44:09Z

iterableapi/src/main/java/com/iterable/iterableapi/IterableNotificationWorker.kt

+
+            if (isGhostPush) {
+                IterableLogger.d(TAG, "Ghost push detected, skipping notification display")
+                return Result.success()


This seems unnecessary to create the IterableNotificationWorker only to skip the notification display. Please remove the flow of ghost/silent notifications from your IterableNotificationWorker class. If you want to log anything related to silent notifications, you can do so inside of handleMessageReceived.

The ghost push notification logic is filtered out already in IterableFirebaseMessagingService.handleMessageReceived to process silent notifications with different notificationTypes.

davidtruong · 2026-02-19T03:08:47Z

iterableapi/src/main/java/com/iterable/iterableapi/IterableFirebaseMessagingService.java

-                        context.getApplicationContext(), extras);
-                new IterableNotificationManager().execute(notificationBuilder);
+
+                enqueueNotificationWork(context, extras);


Does this follow the exact pattern that firebase wants? Didn't it only want to schedule the notificationWork only if there was something necessary to run in the background such as image fetching. Otherwise display the notification immediately?

great catch!

I tried replacing the async task that we had before with the new WorkScheduler 1:1, we were previously not respecting the documentation and that passed by me unnoticed.

I will update the code to follow firebase best practices

davidtruong · 2026-02-19T15:29:59Z

iterableapi/src/main/java/com/iterable/iterableapi/IterableFirebaseMessagingService.java

-                        context.getApplicationContext(), extras);
-                new IterableNotificationManager().execute(notificationBuilder);
+
+                if (IterableNotificationHelper.hasAttachmentUrl(extras)) {


Verified that only the image attachment needs to schedule the NotificationWork.
Sounds are set as part of the notification category so it doesn't need to be scheduled.

yeah from what i checked we don't need to do the sound async, only images

davidtruong · 2026-02-19T15:36:09Z

iterableapi/src/main/java/com/iterable/iterableapi/IterableFirebaseMessagingService.java

+    private static void enqueueNotificationWork(@NonNull final Context context, @NonNull final Bundle extras) {
+        IterableNotificationWorkScheduler scheduler = new IterableNotificationWorkScheduler(context);
+
+        scheduler.scheduleNotificationWork(


How does the scheduler actually create the notification on device?

How does it know the format of how to render the notification since it doesn't call the IterableNotificationHelper.createNotification function?

If you check IterableNotificationWorker.doWork() you can see we are building the notification there, the unused createNotification apparently is there for backwards compatibility since 2019, that actually should be deprecated in my opinion, we can use this PR to do that

jena-chakour requested a review from davidtruong January 29, 2026 16:07

franco-zalamena-iterable self-assigned this Feb 2, 2026

franco-zalamena-iterable requested a review from Ayyanchira February 11, 2026 14:15

franco-zalamena-iterable force-pushed the SDK-324-push-async-fix branch from 43368df to bfd33a5 Compare February 11, 2026 14:54

github-advanced-security bot found potential problems Feb 11, 2026

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iterableapi/src/main/java/com/iterable/iterableapi/IterableFirebaseMessagingService.java Fixed Show fixed Hide fixed

davidtruong requested changes Feb 17, 2026

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franco-zalamena-iterable force-pushed the SDK-324-push-async-fix branch from bfd33a5 to 49ad48c Compare February 17, 2026 16:06

franco-zalamena-iterable requested a review from davidtruong February 17, 2026 16:14

davidtruong reviewed Feb 19, 2026

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franco-zalamena-iterable added 6 commits February 19, 2026 10:52

Updated way of handling notifications to not use AsyncTask

03fe92d

fix checkstyle

d085489

Compatibility with versions prior to Android 12

2a1037a

Removing unnecessary code related to ghost pushes

b6ece27

update changelog

cec31e6

Handling instant notifications directly if possible

10c199b

franco-zalamena-iterable force-pushed the SDK-324-push-async-fix branch from 8a5f313 to 10c199b Compare February 19, 2026 11:09

davidtruong reviewed Feb 19, 2026

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SDK-324 - Updated way of handling notifications to not use AsyncTask#981

SDK-324 - Updated way of handling notifications to not use AsyncTask#981
franco-zalamena-iterable wants to merge 6 commits intomasterfrom
SDK-324-push-async-fix

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franco-zalamena-iterable commented Jan 26, 2026 •

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