For my app, I want users to schedule the time which they receive a specific notification. I was looking over the Firebase docs and could not find a method that would allow me to do this. Is there a way to allow users to schedule notifications with Firebase? My app is still using parse api but as of now parse notifications do not support scheduled pushes.
If plan to use the Firebase console to send messages, there's a simple option to define a time in which you you want the message to go out.
If you plan to send messages via SDK. at this time there is no setting to handle scheduling, you'll have to handle it on your server.
Related
I'm developing an android app using firebase, this app should push notifications twice a day by hours user should set in app settings.
I saw a similar question was asked at least 2 years ago, but no answer, maybe now there is an option to do it.
Is there anyway I can achieve this using Firebase ? If no, how can I achieve it ?
You can schedule sending notifications from the Firebase console. But that is limited to notifications you manually enter. There is no way to schedule "twice a day" delivery, nor is there an API to schedule the delivery programmatically.
This means that you'll have to write code to implement this yourself. One way to do this would be to use the Firebase Cloud Messaging API to send the messages, use the Firebase Realtime Database (or Cloud Firestore) to store information on when and where to send the messages, and then invoke a Cloud Function on a schedule to read the information from the database and call the FCM API.
I am creating mobile application using latest version of Ionic 3. And I am at the point where I need to implement push notifications. I am using FCM. I have managed to done it for Android phones using this plugin: https://github.com/phonegap/phonegap-plugin-push. Reading documentation for this plugin, it says that for Android I should send only Data Messages and that that is the best practice. It also says that send Notification and Data payload would not work properly:
When your app is in the foreground any on('notification') handlers you have registered will be called. If your app is in the background, the notification will show up in the system tray. Clicking on the notification in the system tray will start the app and your on('notification') handler will not be called as messages that have notification payloads will not cause the plugins onMessageReceived method to be called.
But for IOS I need to send notification message with data payload. This would not be a problem if I target directly devices, however I need to send Topic Messages. So the way I see is that on my server I need to implement this logic:
Let's say that the name of topic is FOOD-AND-DRINKS:
function onSomeEvent($data) {
// send push notification to topic ANDROID~FOOD-AND-DRIKS
// send push notification to topic IOS~FOOD-AND-DRINKS
}
Also, since in the future my plan will include multiple cities, and not all people would like to listen for notifications for cities other the one where that person lives, so then my topic would be PLATFORM~CITY~CATEGORY.
So my question would be, is there any better plugin for handling notifications, or some service between my server and Google FCM and that service would take care of that, or this is quite OK what I have proposed?
You can use cloud functions to be able to send notifications since you are using FCM also.
More on this here: https://firebase.google.com/docs/functions/
Cloud Functions for Firebase lets you automatically run backend code in response to events triggered by Firebase features and HTTPS requests. Your code is stored in Google's cloud and runs in a managed environment. There's no need to manage and scale your own servers.
Using cloud functions you can use database triggers like onWrite() and it will be able to send notifications if you have data payload and/or notification.
But if you use data payload alone then you can send if android device is in background also.
Regarding Topics:
If you have multiple cities in your application, then you can let the user register to each topic. You can do in the database like this:
city-category
id_here
cityname: nameX
//other details
id_here1
cityname: nameY
//other details
I have a cross platform application and i want to send notification to sign in users about their messages.
Now I confused about uses of push, local notifications.
What I think of Push notifications is that it is for sending Announcements to users which is not specifically related to their account only.
Can anyone help me out with what should I use? I already used Local notifications in one of my applications with such requirement.
It mainly depends on; is the data coming from local or remote?
You cannot control when your users open the app, and only when they open the app (with a few exceptions) you are able to fetch data. Then with that data you would be able to schedule a local notification. But in most cases that doesn't make much sense, because they have already loaded and probably seen the data. It only makes sense when you schedule an alarm clock for instance.
When you want the data to come from remote, like when they receive a message, you will have to use push notifications. The user is then alerted that new data is available without having to go look for it themselves. It is pushed to them.
However, for push notifications you will need infrastructure which you did not when using local notifications. You will need a server to handle the push notifications (Azure has some awesome functionalities for this) and some trigger to send push notifications. This can be an insert on a database, or a scheduled task. Also, the user has to enable push notifications and your app has to register itself to be able to receive them. It can be a pain to implement it the first time.
It depends on for what reason you're sending the notification.
A local notification is sent locally on the device, so it doesn't need an internet connection. Examples could be:
Send a birthday message when the user has birthday
In a harvesting game, send a local notification when the store is full
A Push Notification is sent from a server and it requires internet on your device to receive it. Examples:
You get a message in a chat while the app is not open (if I understand your question right, this is your case)
In a game: realtime events which are triggered by a server
So in your case, if guess you want to notify the user about new messages if he does not have the app opened. This notification comes from a server and is a Push Notification.
As you describe you want to send notification about sign in users about their messages. so it would be the real time notification about when there is message for user you need to notify the user. so apple having PushNotification is the best approach you need to apply for this. using that you can directly notify user about the new messages.
Why LocalNotification is not useful in this scenario?
I think messaging is the realtime stuff. local notification is not for that. its for only managing local notify stuff. like reminder OR to do added task.. and many more
The latest launch of Firebase notifications feature allows to manually give the time and content of notification. Is it possible to automate it so that notification is received every time a particular variable is changed in the Firebase database?
Thanks for the reply Hamid. I didn't want to get into the technicalities of GCM therefore I implemented the notifications using a service. This service listen on the Firebase database and sends a notification whenever new data is added there.
I think you would have to setup a GCM (Switched to FCM now) server that handles all that. But I also do wish that there was a simple way of setting that up without needing to build a full server.
There is a friendlyping application that helped me set the XPMM server.
I think the current Firebase Notifications are very much in its early days. It doesn't provide many of the functionalities of Batch.com or Parse Server... yet.
I want a push notification, when there is data in server change,delete or added etc The notification is associated with the user. And the Google Cloud Messaging notification is associated for the application running in device. Also there is a lot of over head for developers, when developer are creating the system using google cloud message. Therefore I decide not to use Google Cloud Message.
I know is using XMPP or WebSocket can fulfill my requirement but it is battery inefficient. My question is there a better approach to fulfill my requirement.
You can send the GCM registration Id in the login request to the server and remove it once the user logs out. This way you can send a GCM message to a particular user.
If you want to use a GCM alternative you can try Pushy.me, its also a very good service that uses MQTT protocol and have less headaches as compared to GCM.
Depending on your specific needs, using an alarm and intent service to poll your server every so often - say 24 hours - can work. Then create a local notification if needed. This way no third parties are needed, but you won't have real time notifications.