title: Understanding aspects of Google Cloud Messaging - basic setup
body: <p>I have an android application that is designed to receive push notifications via GCM. When I initially designed the application, I used a "deprecated" tutorial (merely because it was one of the most in-depth I found) and my dev phone was running API 2.4, so I was able to get the service up and running without much issue.</p>
  
  <p>Now, my development device is running Android version 4.4.2, so my goal is to "upgrade" my application to handle GCM properly for all devices (for now, lets ignore the fact that I'll have to differentiate how to handle Push Notifications depending on API level).</p>
  
  <p>I attempted to follow the Android Developer tutorial for creating a demo client app for Google Cloud messaging, which can be found here. <a href="https://developer.android.com/google/gcm/client.html" rel="nofollow">https://developer.android.com/google/gcm/client.html</a></p>
  
  <p>While I hate to sound like I want to ignore to smart coding practices, this official walk through was a little big in terms of scope (My application supports Phonegap, and while I think implementing native GCM is much easier than using the PushPlugin for Phonegap, I don't want to handle more than is absolutely necessary in my Java code)</p>
  
  <p>As a last ditch effort, I simply downloaded the demo gcm code from the source they provided here: <a href="https://code.google.com/p/gcm/source/browse/samples/?r=1ca8e646c517310e2d46a6a6eda74106b8084fc5" rel="nofollow">https://code.google.com/p/gcm/source/browse/samples/?r=1ca8e646c517310e2d46a6a6eda74106b8084fc5</a> </p>
  
  <p>I attempted to import the gcm-demo-client application, and although I know my SENDER_ID, I don't understand anything about the SERVER_URL. The documentation provided by Android Developers talks very generally about HTTP vs. CCS, and I'm struggling to grasp where this server fits into the grand scheme of all that is Google Cloud Messaging. </p>
  
  <p>Assuming I download the gcm-demo-server project directory they included (which seems to be some kind of Java Project), how do I host it? My previous deprecated GCM simply used a basic android application in which I would submit a form containing the device Registration Id, and a message with a title and context. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to import their demo-server into Eclipse (since Eclipse doesn't think it contains ANY project files), AND I cannot seem to understand how this server connects with my application in any capacity.</p>
  
  <p>TL/DR Summary of questions:
  1.) How can I go about "hosting" the gcm-demo-server from URL #2 above? 
  2.) If I can just copy the Registration Id from my client app to the clipboard, can I just use my "android server" application to send my messages?
  3.) Maybe it's just me, but I don't see anything resembling a Receiver class in the gcm-demo-client project directory, only a GcmIntentService. How can there be an intent when the application can't even properly handle messages?!</p>
  
  <p>Thank you for your patience and help! 
  (P.S. - I cannot provide any code- however since the code in question is merely the provided Android Developer GCM demo code, this hopefully won't be a big issue)</p>