I am currently developing an app where users create posts that are stored on a server. When another user shows interest in a post by clicking a button, I want to notify the author of the post using push notifications. I have already set up the data storage using cloud endpoints with Google App Engine. Is there anyway I can use these endpoints to implement push notifications? If not is there another easy way to implement push notifications given my current setup? I have already read about Google Cloud Messaging on the developers page but was somewhat confused. I have kept track of the registration id's but I don't really know where to go from there. Thanks in advance.
You can use the HTTP interface to the GCM servers as described in this
Android developers page.
The easiest way to do it is by downloading the Google Cloud Messaging for Android Library using the Android SDK Manager, which will give you a jar that handles all the complexity of setting up the requests and responses to GCM.
Towards the bottom of that page, there is a sample Java application for push notifications on App Engine which you can use to get familiar with sending push notifications and then adapt to your needs.
Related
Consider a whatsapp group. When any user texts in group, all the participants receive a notification.
Consider Youtube, whenever a content creator uploads a video, I get notifications.
These are all automated.
How to do this? I use Firebase as backend in my android app.
You need back-end services that you communicate with through an Api from your app. Think of this as a communication layer between Firebase and your app.
Generally this can be considered as a REST API. Here is more reading:
https://restfulapi.net/rest-api-design-tutorial-with-example/
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 want to send android push notification to the selected user without using gcm or firebase. The application is already built without firebase. Now I need to integrate push notification too.
Question:
How it's possible without firebase?
Actually I want a feature that, when an admin update the value in the one field in database table of particular user, the that user will get a push notification regarding the update. How it is possible?
The way is to create custom Service https://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/Service.html , which is holding connection via socket or polling some remote server with intervals.
But, I suggest that Firebase service is more advanced and optimized in battery consumption and, particularly, in utilizing the sleep mode. It's not trivial to make a service which will have fast response and CPU consumption. I think that a custom service development will lead to native (C++) coding of networking routines libs.
Also, take into account that Firebase provides own Authentication service with ability to seamless convert your anonymous user to registered. There is a lot of pros of Firebase services. And cons are: your users have to install Google Play Services, if your app will grow - you will pay to Firebase.
Look here Android push notification without Google service
It's possible using VAPID authentication.
Google for VAPID and you will find a very tortuous road that could lead to the answer you are looking for.
another option is Gotify. Gotify is self-hosted open source notification solution that you can use it to send push notification to your android app without need of Firebase.
with help of UnifiedPush you can receive push notifications in your android app.
you can easily host Gotify server on Docker and use it's Api or cli,... to send notifications.
here is a good article about Gotify: https://www.linux-magazine.com/Issues/2020/230/Gotify
I want to send push notification in my app (Android) using Google Cloud Messaging. I am using firebase for backend. As firebase do not support inbuilt push notification i am using Google App Engine.
I do not have any idea on Google App Engine. Right now i am using a template provided by google for sending push notification.
Google Cloud Messaging Template Github
Till now i have deployed my app in Google App Engine and i am able to send push notification to all devices that are registered (From Web) An HTML page i get when i use GCM template.
What i want to do is , to Listen for Firebase data change and send push notification to user who is not online or has closed the app.
How can i run a servlet in background so that it keeps running in background and send push to user who is not online/connected.
As i have only push notification logic in Google App Engine Should i use servlet or struts.
Thanks in Advance
It is my understanding that Firebase really doesn't work very well with GAE, so you might want to reconsider your choices.
Listening for data changes, as you have mentioned, requires that your app leave a background thread running. To do this on GAE you have to disable automatic scaling which is an important feature of GAE.
You could create a separate backend GAE module with manual scaling and then have it use eg. a queue to notify your main GAE module of a data change, but this seems to me to be unnecessarily complicated and inefficient.
Hopefully Firebase will improve their product so it can notify of data changes in a more efficient and flexible manner, but in the mean-time, perhaps you should use a regular compute engine instance.
I was just looking at the new Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) and I was wondering if it is possible to use GCM for Instant Messaging on your Android application?
I saw you can send data, like a message, from a server, but is it also possible to send from one device to another one?
And how would this work?
Some example code would be really helpful..
Tnx!
The official docs on Google Cloud Messaging for Android does mention that GCM can be used to develop an instant messaging app.
...or it could be a message containing up to 4kb of payload data (so
apps like instant messaging can consume the message directly).
So we went ahead and created an instant messaging app using GCM. The server-side is powered by Google App Engine. You can read the complete tutorial here. Create an Instant Messaging app using Google Cloud Messaging (GCM)
So it is possible to use GCM for Instant Messaging on Android, to answer your question. However, reliability of GCM compared to XMPP for IM is another topic.
Just my two cents:
I think you should not use GCM for delivering IM. You should have a dedicated server where your Android IM apps will connect to, using a persistent socket connection. Your server will know who is online or not and therefore can present an 'online list' to all the apps.
GCM can come into play, while users are offline or not running your app. A GCM message can be sent to them to indicate 'XXXX wants to chat'. They can then launch your app and automatically connects to a chat session.
Google has said that the delivery of GCM messages are not guaranteed. This reason alone is not a good idea to rely on them for Instant Messaging.
Try pub nub - it is pretty easy to implement - send Im from one mobile to another - simply fire up the web page (see link) in the browser , and chat between pc, mobile - and works - with 'no server'. Code is for javascript but they also have java. Chat app using jquerymobile web app framework
You might want to check out how a server sends a message to the GCM Service. It is possible to use php on Server side so it should be possible to adapt that to a POST request directly out of your application. However, to communicate you need the registered ids of the devices you want to send data to. Means you will need something to store and get them. Best solution would be your own (web) server which stores all ids and handles the Message sending.