Windows Push Notification Service (WNS) does not accept German characters like ä, ü, ö...

Question

Hi,

I have found a very strange behavior of the Windows Push Notification Service (WNS) if I try to update a tile with a message which contains German characters like ä, ü, ö etc.

I am using the latest version of the "Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8" for sending the push notification.

Here is the code I am using:

IAccessTokenProvider _tokenProvider = new WnsAccessTokenProvider("...", "...");
var uri = new Uri("...");

ITileWideText09 wideTile = TileContentFactory.CreateTileWideText09();
wideTile.TextHeading.Text = "Test-Paket";
wideTile.TextBodyWrap.Text = "ä";

ITileSquareText02 squareTile = TileContentFactory.CreateTileSquareText02();
squareTile.TextHeading.Text = "Test-Paket";
squareTile.TextBodyWrap.Text = "ä";
wideTile.SquareContent = squareTile;

var result = wideTile.Send(uri, _tokenProvider);

When calling wideTile.Send(), I receive a WebException "The request was aborted: The request was canceled." with an inner IOException "Cannot close stream until all bytes are written.".

Here is the callstack:

   at System.Net.ConnectStream.CloseInternal(Boolean internalCall, Boolean aborting)
   at System.Net.ConnectStream.System.Net.ICloseEx.CloseEx(CloseExState closeState)
   at System.Net.ConnectStream.Dispose(Boolean disposing)
   at System.IO.Stream.Close()
   at System.IO.Stream.Dispose()
   at Microsoft.Windows.Samples.Notifications.NotificationSendUtils.Send(Uri channelUri, IAccessTokenProvider accessTokenProvider, String payload, NotificationType type, Nullable`1 secondsTTL, Nullable`1 cache, Nullable`1 requestForStatus, String tag, NotificationPriority priority, Int32 tokenRetry) in c:\WindowsAzure\WATWindows\Libraries\WnsRecipe\WnsRecipe\NotificationSendUtils.cs:line 55

I have already tried to HTML escape the character ä with ä but then the character is not unescaped when the tile is shown!

What I am doing wrong?

Thanks in advance!

Bye,

Sebastian

Answer 1

Hi Sebastian, I am looking into this.

---

Matt Small - Microsoft Escalation Engineer - Forum Moderator
If my reply answers your question, please mark this post as answered.

Answer 2

Hey there,

Looks like there's a bug with Azure Toolkit.  We'll have a fix and update soon.  And once that's available, we'll respond with a link on where to get it.

Thanks,
Darren

Answer 3

Hi Darren,

thanks for your feedback! I am looking forward for the fix! :)

Bye,

Sebastian

Answer 4

Hi Sebastian,

I have released an updated version of the WnsRecipe v 0.0.3.2 on NuGet - http://nuget.org/packages/wnsrecipe . This fixes the language issue you were experiencing and also cleans up the namespaces used by the package.

To update your solution to use this the simplest way would be to:

• Right click on your project and select 'Manage NuGet Packages
• Select the Updates tab in the left nav bar
• Select WnsRecipe and press Update
• Update your using statements to

using NotificationsExtensions;
using NotificationsExtensions.TileContent;

• Set the appropriate BCP 47 language code  for your wideTile.Lang and squareTile.Lang properties

    IAccessTokenProvider tokenProvider = new WnsAccessTokenProvider("<your package sid>", "<your client secret>");
    var uri = new Uri("<your endpoint uri>");

    ITileWideText09 wideTile = TileContentFactory.CreateTileWideText09();
    wideTile.Lang = "de-DE";
    wideTile.TextHeading.Text = "Test-Paket";
    wideTile.TextBodyWrap.Text = "ä";

    ITileSquareText02 squareTile = TileContentFactory.CreateTileSquareText02();
    squareTile.Lang = "de-DE";
    squareTile.TextHeading.Text = "Test-Paket";
    squareTile.TextBodyWrap.Text = "ä";
    wideTile.SquareContent = squareTile;

    var result = wideTile.Send(uri, tokenProvider);

Kind Regards,

Nick Harris

 

---

My Blog: http://www.nickharris.net

Answer 5

Hi Nick,

thanks for your fix! Everything works fine now! :)

I have an additional question regarding the language code: Can you give me some details on how the language code is used in WinRT? I am asking because I can successfully send a tile update with german formatted content without setting the language code to "de-DE".

Thanks in advance!

Bye,

Sebastian

Answer 6

The version I downloaded yesterday still had this problem.

here http://watwindows8.codeplex.com/releases/view/84166 still 1.2.4 version is available from April :(

The solution was to change line 284 in BasePushNotification

from:

request.ContentLength = payload.Length;

to:

request.ContentLength = payloadBytes.Length;

Answer 7

Hi ladeak - updates to the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 RP are still in progress.  In the meantime please utilize the NuGet package to update using the nuget package manager console in visual studio

uninstall-package wnsrecipe

followed by

install-package wnsrecipe

will bring you up to date.

kind regards,

nick harris

---

My Blog: http://www.nickharris.net

Answer 8

Hi Nick,

Do we have the receipe for normal WCF or c# projects as well.

I want to send notification through service running on my web server.

I try installing the package but it gets me this error

Successfully installed 'WnsRecipe 0.0.3.2'.

Successfully uninstalled 'WnsRecipe 0.0.3.2'.

Install failed. Rolling back...

Could not install package 'WnsRecipe 0.0.3.2'. You are trying to install this package into a project that targets '.NETFramework,Version=v3.5', but the package does not contain any assembly references that are compatible with that framework. For more information, contact the package author.

Thanks,

Chandan

---

Chandan Mahajan