I have a Flutter app integrated with a Firebase Realtime Database.
I want a notification (actually an alarm kind of thing if possible), when an item (lets call it alarm) in the database is set to "true". I always see firebase_messaging plugin for notifications, but I am not sure if I'm supposed to use this plugin despite that my app doesn't have anything to do with messaging.
I am totally new to both Flutter and Firebase, can you tell me how to listen to the database even if the app is not running?
By the way, I am currently building the app for only Android, but I want to build it for IOS too in the future.
Thanks.
You can use/write firebase cloud fucntion. Using firebase cloud function you can watch any document/field and try to write trigger logic like if a field is set to true then this cloud function will throw an notification via firebase messaging.
https://firebase.flutter.dev/docs/functions/overview/
When the user is not actively using the app there is no reliable way to continue to listen to changes in the Firebase Realtime Database. To notify the user of changes to the database in that situation, you'll need to listen for those change on an environment that is always on, and then send a message to the user through Firebase Cloud Messaging.
One environment that is always in is Cloud Functions, which is also part of Firebase, and allows you to run small snippets of JavaScript code on Google's servers in response to things that happen in your Firebase project. The documentation of Cloud Functions for Firebase as example of how to notify the user when something interesting happens in the database:
Developers can use Cloud Functions to keep users engaged and up to date with relevant information about an app. Consider, for example, an app that allows users to follow one another's activities in the app. Each time a user adds themselves as a follower of another user, a write occurs in the Realtime Database. Then this write event could trigger a function to create Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) notifications to let the appropriate users know that they have gained new followers.
The function triggers on writes to the Realtime Database path where followers are stored.
The function composes a message to send via FCM.
FCM sends the notification message to the user's device.
To review working code, see Send FCM notifications.
Related
I have already built a chat app to practice flutter and I would really like to integrate push notifications that notify the users when a new message is sent but I don't seem to find any relevant information on the internet about this topic, I am currently using firebase. what can I do in order to achieve this functionality?
Since you are already using firebase, look into Firebase Cloud Messaging. You'll need to
Save each user's device tokens in Cloud Firestore and Realtime Database
When a message is sent/written to the database, trigger a cloud function to send a notification through Cloud Messaging.
you have to use firebase cloud messaging by you have to safe each user token id
that will be notify users for a particular event
check my repository in developer branch where I implement push notification by
using firebase cloud messaging
my repository for push notification
I'm using firebase as database. Flutter responds when any changes are made in cloud while using app, but will is respond the changes even when the app is in background or killed?
Second: is it possible to create notifications within the flutter app without using Firebase notification feature? Like a new document is added in database and app is suppose to create notification using some specific lib from pubdev.
When the user is not actively using the app, the OS (Android or iOS) allows a very limited amount of network activity from that app. For this reason you'll typically stop receiving updates from Firebase once the app is backgrounded, and you won't receive any updates as soon as it's killed.
If you want to show updates to the user when they're not using the app, that typically takes using Firebase Cloud Messaging. With this scenario you:
Set up custom server-side code that listens to the database. This code can run on your own server, but also for example on Cloud Functions.
When this code detects a change to the data, it sends a message to the relevant user(s) through Firebase Cloud Messaging.
This requires that the app registers itself either in your database (with its FCM token) or for a certain FCM topic to receive updates about.
For more on this, see the Firebase documentation on Cloud Messaging, Cloud Functions, my answer here and the FlutterFire docs.
hello I'm new to flutter and trying to get push notification in flutter , I have successfully subscribed the user to a topic and sent a notification through the firebase console by topic , what I'm trying to do is to have a button for admins in the app and when they post for a particular topic the users with that topic get the notification I have heard about cloud functions but I don't know exactly where to start ! i hope I made my point ! I have seen some videos that talks about type script but is there is any workaround this ?
The Firebase documentation names notifying the user when something interesting happens as an example use-case. From there:
Developers can use Cloud Functions to keep users engaged and up to date with relevant information about an app. Consider, for example, an app that allows users to follow one another's activities in the app. Each time a user adds themselves as a follower of another user, a write occurs in the Realtime Database. Then this write event could trigger a function to create Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) notifications to let the appropriate users know that they have gained new followers.
The function triggers on writes to the Realtime Database path where followers are stored.
The function composes a message to send via FCM.
FCM sends the notification message to the user's device.
To review working code, see Send FCM notifications.
I'm working on a Progressive Web App (PWA) and I need to send important reminders through push messages. Users should receive them even if they are offline.
Is it possible to use Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) for that (maybe preload the messages or something like that?) or do I need to get a different route for offline?
Adapted after AL's comments below and Frank's comment above
It is possible to send "push messages" via Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) to a device that is offline, BUT the user will only see the message when the device is online again. If the device is offline it cannot receive immediately any (push) message from the "external world". If you want to trigger some reminders that are immediately visible for a device which is offline, you will have to do it locally, on the device, and not by relying on a push from the "external world".
So, having said that, if you want to use Firebase Cloud Messaging to send messages, you can do it by using Cloud Functions, i.e. from a "trusted environment". Have a look at this official Firebase Cloud Function sample: https://github.com/firebase/functions-samples/tree/master/fcm-notifications
You could trigger this Cloud Function when e.g. a new item is saved in the database (Real Time Database or Firestore), or an existing one is modified/deleted, or a file is uploaded to Storage, etc.
I'm trying to configure Firebase Messaging in Flutter, but it seems that there is no implementation yet for the Upstream messages.
https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/android/upstream
What I want to do is to add a reminder and notify the user after x time with a push notification.
Let me know if you guys have any other solution, or we should simply wait for Flutter and Firebase for Flutter to became stable.
Thanks
Alvin
You are correct that there is no implementation for upstream messaging in FlutterFire yet, we are working on filling out these features. However given your use case you may be able to do something like write the user's reminder to Firestore or Firebase Realtime Database then when you are ready to send push notifications you can use Cloud Functions for Firebase to send the messages to the required devices.