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xmpp openfire push notification and logging

I am building the java backend for an app (android & ios) which has a messenger function integrated.
I was playing around with openfire and ejabberd the last days and was wondering how i can solve my problem - I want to catch all messages from and to Server for
log messages to custom history file
send push notifications to android & ios client when offline.
Has anyone implemented something like this yet? I have read something about a xmpp proxy doing that work but i really dont know how to start.
thanks in advance.
- bob

1: log messages to custom history file: For Openfire, you can write your custom plugin with packet interceptor and you can log information as per your business needs. You can definitely find opensource plugins for this, but as per my experience, I have done custom work to log specific information.
2: send push notifications to android & ios client when offline: Again my experience is with custom solution as per Business needs. Custom code can be injected in your Openfire code and you can send http request to your push server (or You can send push directly to GCM or Apple by determining the platform of recipient). Custom code also provides you the ability to send as much information as you require. Like, You can send actual chat message in push, or if you want to send some customized message in push.
but i really dont know how to start: If you are willing to perform custom changes for your business needs, then hurry to checkout Openfire code from Github and set up development environment.
For Openfire Plugin Development, You can start with the plugin development guide: https://www.igniterealtime.org/builds/openfire/docs/latest/documentation/plugin-dev-guide.html

How to implement push notifications on my android device

I have a very basic design of my entire application, where several users with my app on there android devices commits data to the server (I have used REST web services(java) + postgresql as my server) through HTTP post request from the android application. I am successful in achieving this and app runs absolutely fine. Now i want to implement a scenario where any change(CRUD operations) on my db on server should create a notification on my users android device. How should i achieve this with my server design unchanged? I have looked into Google Cloud Messaging, but could figure out the server implementation.
For now i have implemented db triggers on postgresql and able to get control back into java code using Notify/Listen feature of postgresql. From here i need to connect to android device. How can this be achieved. Is Google Cloud Messaging the only way? I have not seen any insert/update statements in there server implementation. Could anyone please guide me on this?

either you can use GCM or implement a Socket at server end and open a socket connection from mobile but this approach may add some additional processing overhead because it will create a daemon thread to listen socket port from mobile device.

You should use native library (NotificationManager etc.), here you can find a great tutorial.

My Advice is for you to use GCM. GCM normally takes a maximum of 4kb, so you could have your own defined "commands". You could use them to determine the requests on both ends, ie on android app and the server end. A php script on the server would help you in this.
I am working on an app where by the android app sends messages to the server via POST and the server forwards the message to the appropriate user via GCM. In my case I have very many things to share so in that case I am using commands, for example if it is a new incoming message I send a GCM to the app with one variable as the command and the rest as the data. On the android app I use the command variable to determine what to do with the data.
Kindly avoid that socket advice, it will have your app drain the battery to sustain the open socket , besides you don't have to re-invent the wheel while Google servers already has it

Mobile back end push and pub/sub (GCM or not)

We already have a quite complex mobile backend written in Java which is deployed and works fine, so we do not have any need to use the Google mobile backend. Now we have requirements for pushing some data from the back end to the phone. Earlier I used GCM regularly. Our first requirement is only simple messaging, but it may evolve to something like a pub sub (phones subscribing to topics).
The issue I am not understanding is should I now use GCM like before, and later develop my own pub/sub overlay, or can I use the products Google has developed for that? Is this even possible, since everything I am finding on Google pages is just related to communication between Android phones via their cloud storage, so no library for communication between a custom back end and a phone?
In short, what should I use, regular GCM or is there something Google is providing which I am not understanding?

You can use regular GCM. A custom back-end can send messages to an Android app via GCM. The library for sending messages from a 3rd party server to GCM still exists (com.google.android.gcm.server package in the Google Cloud Messaging for Android Library), but you don't have to use it - you can implement the HTTP POST requests yourself.

What is the established way to request data from an android device

I currently have an small application that I have been using to learn java/android programming. Right now I have a setup were the app on one phone sends a request (via sms) to another phone running the same app. The remote phone receives the request and sends back some info. Next I would like to try this from the web. Is there an established "best" way to to this?
I was thinking I would have a web server send requests to the device via google cloud messaging and then have the device return the data directly to the web server. (Not that I really know how to do any of that just yet).
I see that there is a google cloud messaging return path (send messages from the device to the google cloud server, but it seems very new, do I need something like that? The main thing I want is to be able to ask the phone to do something when I want, not have it poll to see if there is a request, or just periodically update some status.
UPDATE:
Thanks to the answers below for confirming to me that I was on the right track.
I now have some basic functionality.
I started out using this gcm android demo code
https://code.google.com/p/gcm/source/browse/#git%2Fgcm-client%2Fsrc%2Fcom%2Fgoogle%2Fandroid%2Fgcm%2Fdemo%2Fapp%253Fstate%253Dclosed
and this ruby gem
https://github.com/spacialdb/gcm/blob/master/README.md
between the above two I was able to send a message to my phone pretty easily.
To get the round trip working, I setup a very simple rails app on heroku.
I included a modified version of the sample code in the gcm gem in a controller and then used
HttpPatch (needed for rails 4) to send a post/patch from my phone to my web app, the controller then echoes the message back to my phone.
I guess it would be nice to get the two way gcm stuff to work, but I am not sure there are any gems that handle that, and I am not qualified to handle a task like that :)

I would say it's the right call: Google Cloud Messaging for Android
From the site Android Developer:
This could be a lightweight message telling your app there is new data
to be fetched from the server (for instance, a movie uploaded by a
friend), or it could be a message containing up to 4kb of payload data
(so apps like instant messaging can consume the message directly).
In this case you don't want to fetch data from the server but you want to send them.
You can send them in different ways. I would suggest, since you are learning, to try a RESTful solution using one of the implementation of JAX-RS.

As a short and direct answer for beginner : GCM (Google Cloud Messaging) would solve your issue. However, if your app turned out to be something bigger, other more technical and complicated solutions are present too.
see this link.

How to implement a messaging feature in android application to other android devices and to computers

I've been working on an android application and I am trying to figure out how to implement a messaging feature for the application to send messages to other phones and to my web app. I have been doing a fair amount of research and I haven't yet found any ways of going about this, or at least not any straightforward ones. Could someone point me in the right direction with this? Is there a relatively simple way to get this functionality? I have found links that show how to use google's cloud service but I am extremely unfamiliar with this so I was wondering if there were other better/simpler implementations or instructions out there. Thanks in advance for the help.

For security and privacy reasons, your phone/tablet app cannot (should not) communicate directly with other devices (unless they're on the same WiFi or similar and explicitly bound via bluetooth .etc)
So the way to do this on Android is use Cloud to Device Messaging (C2DM).
Your app will send a web request to your server, with the message and intended recipients.
Your server will look at this, find the C2DM IDs of the recipients, and send the message to Google's C2DM service, which will then be pushed down to each device.
Your app should have a C2DM receiver to receive these messages and process them.
Check here for more information on implementing C2DM
http://code.google.com/android/c2dm/