I just switched my app over to firebase 2.0 from parse. Basically I have an android app (main app) built for the general public to use. Then I also built a second app (manager app) that only I and a few others have access to which is used to update the content of the main app. Now I am adding in notifications which work fine when I send them from the firebase console, however, is it possible to send them from the manager app to the main app? If not, what would I need to do in order to send them from somewhere other than the console (I don't want anyone else to have access to the console but would like them to be able to send notifications.) Thanks!
Seems like you are looking for device to device messaging. This is not currently supported by FCM, so you will need some type of server.
The server could implement XMPP in which case it can be a relay, upstream messages from admin client will be converted to downstream messages to non-admin clients.
The server could watch the Firebase Relatime Database and then the admin client could write something to the database and the server watching the database could then take action and send notifications to non-admin clients.
Related
I am developping a mobile application that must implement push notifications. Documents are stored on a SQL database, and people should be able to edit these docs after downloading them offline, then the modifications should be saved in the SQL Database once the phone is online again. People should be able to receive notifications when the app is closed.
I heard that I need push notifications, and for android there is Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM). But is it possible to use FCM with my SQL database ?
All tutorials in the docs only speak about connecting the app with Firebase
For your project you need a server with your API, SQL Database... and a push notification server that ask FCM services to notify your registered devices.
FCM works like that :
You add the FCM plugin in your Android/iOS app, then when you launch the application it will ask FCM for a unique token associated for your device and this app. You will store that unique token in your push notification server, I advise you to associate it with a user identifier or one thing that you will use to identify the device to notify.
When your first server (with the APIs and the Database) did some action and you want to notify a device :
The server will ask your push notification server to notify a list of devices that you will probably determine with the user identifier like I said earlier, then the push notification server will find the associated tokens and send all of the pre stored tokens to FCM with the notification content you want to send, you can also send parameters that will be used to do special actions in your mobile app.
Finally FCM will notify your devices :)
Hope it helps.
I want to send push notification using firebase from my admin panel web page to the android phones registered in firebase database. I have tried sending notifications using PHP and mySQL but want to use firebase only to send notification. I have also tried sending notification from firebase console to android devices. But I want to use the firebase API to send notification from web to android devices.
Firebase Notification is a panel in the Firebase Console, where you can send messages to specific devices, device groups, topics and audiences. It cannot send messages to Web users (yet). There is no public API for Firebase Notifications.
There is an API for Firebase Cloud Messaging, on top of which Notifications is built. FCM support most ways of sending messages: specific devices, device groups and topics. It also supports sending to all platforms: iOS, Android and Web.
But sending messages to devices through FCM always requires that you specify the FCM Server Key. As its name implies, this key should only be used on trusted processes. The most common way to run a trusted process is to run it on your app server (for example using PHP code that runs on a hosted server). But you can also run it on your own machine. Firebase recently released Cloud Functions for Firebase, which allows you to run JavaScript functions on Google's hardware. Sending FCM messages is one of the documented use-cases for Cloud Functions for Firebase.
I have two version from my app one for the customer and one for the client I need to send push notification to the specific client(in client app) when the customer take an specific action (in customer app).
I know that I should use Firebase Cloud Messaging as it's a new replacement to GCM, but I can't figure out how I can do this in both server side and client side.
you have a lot of options here!
let's start with the server side:
you have two options HTTP or XMPP, HTTP is a one way connection XMPP is two way.
for your app you will need XMPP for upstream and down stream messages
check there Guides it's really great: Server guide
there is also a Java and Node.JS Admin SDKs but i don't know much about.
but there is a great Tutorial which describes the whole proccess if you go for Node.js
So what happens is:
when a device sends an upstream message
Firebase will forward it to your server
Your server should handle the message and send it to the other device through Firebase cloud messaging
you can implement a server-less app using real time databse but you will not receive message in background, but when the receiver app is running it listen to databse changes and send notification to user
you can also make a server listens to databse changes "instead of receiver" and take actions upon it"send a message to the other device"
Edit:
with the new cloud function feature you can now use it to send notifications to users based on database events,
so you can add your message to database in a class
and make a cloud function to listen to this class write events
and whenever a message saved to this class, it sends it to desired
receiver
so now you don't need an external server to send notifications to
devices
check this cloud function sample, it's an example of sending notifications based on database event.
I need some clarifications.
I'm using Firebase realtime database.
Now I've to implement a realtime chat between two android devices. I need also push notifications.
So, the solution based on realtime database is to drop because if the app isn't running, it will not handle the onChildAdded event.
I read on the documentation that I can achieve my aim, using the upstream message from the device to the server.
Now, it's written also that we need an app server.
I just want to be clarified the need of the app server (XMPP or HTTP), and which is the entire flow of message m1 sent from the device A, and the notification on the device B.
In my opinion the app server should act as a man in the middle, so:
A ---> XMPP SERVER ---> FCM
FCM ---> XMPP SERVER ---> B
Is this the flow?
On the documentation I can't understand if I'm right or not.
If so, how do I send a message from the FCM back to the XMPP Server?
The notification message is sent from FCM to the client o from XMPP Server?
Please someone clarify me.
Other solution thought by me:
Since I find really powerful firebase realtime database, I thought these solution to walk around the problem:
Create an app server the is listening for onChildAdded and when it changes send a notification to client device.
Creating a background service on the client app listening to onChildAdded and create notification when necessary.
Even all, I don't like these solutions.
Just want to understand the standard and correct way to achieve my aim.
Firebaser and author of the article debated in the question comments here
To send messages to a device with Firebase Cloud Messaging, you need to specify your project's FCM Server Key. As its name suggests, this key should only be used in code that runs in a trusted environment: i.e. a server that you control.
To send device-to-device messages (such as in a 1:1 chat application where the receiving user is not necessarily online) you need two steps:
one user send an upstream message
the other user receives the downstream message
Using Firebase Cloud Messaging and your custom app server code, you can handle step 2. But that still leaves step 1: the user needs to send a message that somehow triggers your code on the app server. There are quite a few ways to do this.
For example you could implement an HTTP endpoint on your app server and have the chat application send the messages there too (in addition to sending to the database).
You could also implement an XMPP endpoint and have the chat application send the message there (again in addition to sending it to the database).
My article suggest yet another way, one that doesn't require implementing an endpoint at all. It uses a node.js script that runs on your app server and is essentially just a client to the database. Whenever this script detects a relevant chat message, it calls the FCM API and sends the downstream message.
This pattern of using the Firebase Database as your endpoint and then using server-side scripts is quite common when using Firebase. We documented it in our classic blog post Where does Firebase fit in your app? (as option 2) and in this article in the Google Cloud documentation.
I would like to implement GCM in my Android app:
One Android app
Registered- U_user and another M_user.
I have Google Sign In in my app thats works fine with JSON and GSON and local MySQL database server with tomcat-server restutil to keep storing Gmail login users.
So, I want to send a notification from U_user to M_user.
U_user does a registration that has been pushed to M_user.
How can I do this?
I am assuming you mean the same Android app installed on different phones (U_user's phone and a separate phone for M_user).
To quote a section in the docs:
To make sure that messages go to the intended user:
Your app server can maintain a mapping between the current user and the registration ID.
The app can then check to ensure that messages it receives match the logged in user.
What this means is that you can send messages to another user through GCM. To let the app server know what to send to M_user, let U_user send an upstream message to your GCM app server (only possible in app servers using XMPP - see here). Alternatively, you have the option to do POST requests to your app server via HttpUrlConnection (can work on both XMPP- and HTTP-based GCM app servers).
Regardless of which method you use, specify in these messages to the server that you would like to send a message to M_user.