Bug in WP7 Training kit

Last week I lost a lot of time while implementing push notifications for my Windows Phone 7 app(more about it soon!). I implemented the push notifications similar to thearrangement that Microsoft has set up in the WP7 training kit. When I launch the app and then exit the app to go back to the home screen, I am able to successfully send a toast notification.

However, when I send the same exact shell toast notification to my application while the application is running in the foreground, I get an error complaining that there is an invalid character for the root XML node. I found out there is an error in the NotificationSenderUtility that comes with the WP7 push notification sample in the training kit to send the notifications.

Anyway the solution is simple, replace the PrepareToastPayLoad message inside the NotificationSenderUtility with this code:

   1:  private byte[] PrepareToastPayload(string text1, string text2)

   2:          {

   3:              MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream();

   4:              XmlWriterSettings settings = new XmlWriterSettings() { Indent = true, Encoding = new UTF8Encoding(false) };

   5:              XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create(stream, settings);

   6:              writer.WriteStartDocument();

   7:              writer.WriteStartElement("wp", "Notification", "WPNotification");

   8:              writer.WriteStartElement("wp", "Toast", "WPNotification");

   9:              

  10:              writer.WriteStartElement("wp", "Text1", "WPNotification");

  11:              writer.WriteValue(text1);

  12:              writer.WriteEndElement();

  13:              

  14:              writer.WriteStartElement("wp", "Text2", "WPNotification");

  15:              writer.WriteValue(text2);

  16:              writer.WriteEndElement();

  17:   

  18:              writer.WriteEndElement();

  19:              writer.WriteEndElement();

  20:              writer.WriteEndDocument();

  21:              writer.Close();

  22:   

  23:              byte[] payload = stream.ToArray();

  24:              return payload;

  25:          }