title: iOS notifications - need to get data from within the app to display in the notification itself
body: <p>Essentially we want users to receive a push notification from us which is basically a text message from a Sender - the message has been sent to us and is to be pushed to the app of a X number of users. </p>
  
  <p>We obviously want to notify the user (Recipient) that they've received a message and also who it's from via the notification before they access the app. "You've received ABC message from XXX" - swipe and they'll be taken to the app. ABC being the content of the message, XXX being the sender's details.</p>
  
  <p>We've got the mobile number of the Sender which we could use to display as the XXX, but more than likely the user has the Sender's name and number stored in their address book and we'd like to display the name of the Sender in the notification if this is the case.</p>
  
  <p>We will have access to the user's iOS contacts from within the app (if they grant us permission) and we'll be keeping a hashed copy of the contacts in order to facilitate friend matching, but we don't want to upload the address book in a readable format to our server (even if we are allowed to).</p>
  
  <p>Is there any way that i can get a notification to the phone and pull data from within the app/phonebook first? </p>
  
  <p>Maybe there's a "silent" notification that can be sent to the app and then the app can provide some sort of internal notification rather than an external push notification (the internal notification will come from the app so it could compare the number in the phone book and pull the name and the name can be displayed in the notification).</p>
  
  <p>Thinking about it, does it matter which notification provider we use?</p>
  
  <p>Will iOS 8 bring any deeper integration that we could use?</p>
  
  <p>ANY suggestions are welcome!!!</p>
  
  <p>Many thanks.</p>