We are building a real-time mobile to web text & image chat application using Firebase. Consumers can send messages to 10 categories for example, TV Help, Computer Help, Camera Help etc from an android mobile app. Agents will receive messages on an AngularJS web app where they can reply. Now, one category can have many agents under it.
For example, if ConsumerA sends a message to "Camera Help", the messages should be routed to AgentA & AgentB, if they are handling "Camera Help". Any of them can reply to the consumer.
What is the best way to structure a firebase database for this use case?
Also, we would like to send consumers android push notifications if the app is not in use. I have heard you can use a firebase queue, but it seems challenging, are there any examples of this?
Thanks
Well if I am to design your firebase it would be like,
Customer_name
Customer_number
Customer_address...and other customer related data
Category_of_item
Message
Time and date of message
The part of using firebase for push notifications is concerned, then there is no direct support for that in firebase I would suggest you to go for parse or GCM. Cheers :)
Related
Have 2 apps on separate devices: Rider & Driver.
Let's say, the Driver needs to contact the Rider via messaging, or vice versa, is there a way to do it without using the stocked message app to protect privacy?
My idea was to create on both apps an empty box, add a text view for the message and send button and add the msgs to firebase db. Unfortunately, i am not sure how i would do it in Android as well as the response.
Any suggestions or how to's would be greatly appreciated.
You could probably integrate your app with Firebase.
For simple messaging, you could use Firebase Cloud Firestore to do it and for notification, you can use Firebase Cloud Messaging.
Messaging
You can have a sub-collection to store all the chats between the rider and driver in the form of documents. 1 chat will be a document storing the info such as time, sender, as well as message.
Notification
From the doc:
Send acknowledgments, chats, and other messages from devices back to
your server over FCM’s reliable and battery-efficient connection
channel.
You could start research from Firebase sample application.
Highly recommend you go through this third party tutorial: Firebase Tutorial: Real-time Chat to get some idea, it's in iOS but the concept is the same.
Yes, there is a way to do it.
Actually you can use any messaging platform, e.g. Firebase, ConnectyCube, Twillio, Layer etc.
All of them provide API & SDK for iOS, Android and Web for chat so you can easily do it using it.
I used ConnectyCube some time ago, it can be done in the following way:
Initialize app
Sign Up user
Connect to chat
Create a chat dialog with other user
Send/Receive messages
More detailed chat code sample for Android can be found here
Most of the above platforms provide a cloud hosted plan, but some of them also provide an Enterprise plan when you the whole platform can be installed at your AWS/Google/Azure account, so hence the privacy is the best because you own all your data
I want to develop a website that will be able to send push notifications to a mobile application that would be able to run on both android and iOS.
For the last couple of years, I am working as a web developer so developing the website is not something that I am worried about, but I have never developed a mobile application before, the mobile app would only receive notifications from the website so the main functionality would be in the website.
Can anyone suggest me what the best approach is and what I have to learn to be able to do this?
Thank you in Regards
I guess, you have 2 options.
You can either use Firebase FCM
https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/
or use a third party which is called OneSignal
https://onesignal.com/.
If you are looking for an easier way then I recommend using OneSignal instead. You just need to define API Key in your build.gradle and initialize OneSignal in onCreate().
The best approach, in my opinion, would be to use firebase (https://firebase.google.com/products/cloud-messaging/). I think it is better because it is a unique framework for both ios and android and you don't need to worry about the user device when sending the message(you could build an interface in your backend code to handle this but why doing something that already exists and it is free).
The flow is something like this:
on the first start the app(either ios or android) must send its firebase ID to your server so that you can store it (simple http request will od it) and set up a listener for the incoming push messages
when you need to send a push message all you need to do is an http request and you can trigger it with js from your website. The request will contain data such as the firebase id of the receiving device(which you have previously stored)
Firebase Cloud Messaging also have some really nice features like upstream messages(push messages from the device to the server, but you need an xmpp server to listen for them) and topics to send the same notification to many users at the same time
I think the best approach would be to create a node server where the website would be running on and then use Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) to send notifications
EDIT: FCM supports both Android and iOS
I am developing an application that saves some data in the Firebase Database. As soon as the data is saved, I want it to be given as a notification to all the users connected to the application through code.
I couldn't understand the procedure to do so. Can anyone explain me how one can send push notifications via code in the chain as Android phone -> Firebase Database -> Notification to Android Phone with the data.
it isn't Possible to solve your Problem with Firebase only. You have to create a MySQL Server and work with PHP. Maybe this Video from Filip Vujovic could help you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiKCEa5_Cs8
You can use GCM,it's simple.The GCM service handles all aspects of queueing of messages and delivery to client applications running on target devices, and it is completely free.
I am new to gcm api for android and have for some time now i have being working on an android app to allow chatting between two users of the app. The app is such that a chat can only be initiated when one user opts to contact the other user. But my confusion comes in the manner i would be able to create a chatroom for these two users and for the other user to be able receive messages. since i found out that each user must subscribe to a topic inorder to receive messages in that topic. Would i have to subscribe all users to all possible topics or what? that is my big question but it seems it would have so much overhead considering i have 1000+ users.
Please i need all the help i can get here. Thanks
Would i have to subscribe all users to all possible topics or what?
GCM topic messaging allows your app server to send a message to multiple devices that have opted in to a particular topic.
It is not a requirement but it can ease the work for the server to send messages. In this tutorial, you will see that they have created a chat like environment using GCM without using the topic function.
BUT consider the effects on your server like how will it behave on the potential load when you use the topic messaging, especially the the message will trigger an interaction from the user to the server.
I am a newbie in android. I have developed few applications, but all are plain and simple, just used the built in features of android.
I was asked about push notifications, in one of my interviews and I decided to have a look at what Push Notifications are. I understand the concept of Push Notifications(I think), but whenever I read the term "Server", it's freaking me out.
I understand all the client side coding, but I don't get how to implement the server side coding. I have seen some people use XMPP, MQTT, etc., What are those? Here is my scenario and what I want to know..
Scenario ::: Let's say I have a website, with a table (the values are retrieved from database), where I update a few columns every day. I want these updates to be reflected in my android application. So, as I have read, push notifications can tell the application that there are updates available. Good. I am fine till here..
When the application gets the notification, should my application, contact the website and get the latest information? or will the updated information sent through Push Notification? I guess, my application would be contacting the website and get the information. Now, how do I get the data from the website? Should I get the source of the page and do some kind of parsing or something?
I will be asking more questions, as the experts clear my questions...
Sorry, if my questions are too naive, but this is the only place that can help me...
Push Notifications means Google Cloud Messaging for Android (GCM) is a service that allows you to send data from your server to your users' Android-powered device.
You can refer to this documentation
Google Cloud Messaging for Android
GCM: Getting Started
And there is also Demo App Tutorial given
in your case you need to create HTTP web service for getting data from the server.so when you get notification about update on server side.you just need to call this web service and get the data you need to update