So i'm making an app using React JS, Cordova, node backend and a mongo database. I want to integrate firebase cloud messaging (FCM) into my platform. I'm quite new to firebase, and developing in general, and i'm not quite sure where to initialise firebase. I currently have it integrated into the front-end and it's requesting permission to receive notifications, generating tokens, and receiving messages from the firebase console. However i'm not entirely sure where to go from here. Do I add it to my backend as-well?
If you can receive messages in your client app, your front-end work is done for the moment.
But to send messages programmatically, you will need to write back-end code indeed. That's because sending messages through FCM requires that you specify the FCM server key to the API, and as its name implies that key should only be used in a trusted environment, such as your development machine, a server you control, or Cloud Functions.
For more on this, have a look at:
The architectural overview of FCM
The documentation on your server and FCM
My answer to How to send one to one message using Firebase Messaging
You have to get the FCM token from the frontend (or, client app).
After getting the token, just send it to your backend server using a POST method.
Then, store the token in whatever database you're using in your backend. It can be MongoDB, PostgreSQL, etc.
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I am coding a React Native app and I using Firebase push notification service.
In my app, users can send message for each other and I want to notify them when they get message.
I found one way for native android I can code for react native it is not problem just I want to know if there is better way. I can make post to directly to Firebase service with using Http post.
This is the link which way I found: https://blog.usejournal.com/send-device-to-device-push-notifications-without-server-side-code-238611c143
I want to push notification to specific device without server, is there another way to do this?
Sending a message to a device with Firebase Cloud Messaging requires that you specify the FCM server key. As its name implies, this key is supposed to only be used in trusted environments, as knowing it allows one to send any message they want to all users of the app. For this reason it is not possible to secure send messages directly from one device to another device with FCM.
Instead you will have to run code in a trusted environment, such as your development machine, a server you control, or Cloud Functions. Your client-side application code invokes the server-side code, that ensures the call is authorized, and then calls the FCM API.
For more on this see:
How to send one to one message using Firebase Messaging
How to send device to device messages using Firebase Cloud Messaging?
I need to handle social activity events in my web app application developed using Vue JS framework and Firebase.
I want to show to the user “Facebook like” notifications when some activity happen in the application, for example:
“John liked your post”.
Is Firebase Cloud Messaging useful for this scenario? Or do I have to develop some custom solution from scratch?
If Firebase Cloud Messaging do the job, is it possible to send messages directly from user web client?
You should not try to send messages directly from the web client. FCM is intended to be used via a secure backend where your code runs to send messages. The reason a backend is needed is to prevent your private server key from being exposed to the world, which can cause security issues in your app.
You will have to arrange on your backend to determine when events occur that should generate messages, and use the Firebase Admin SDK to send those message, or work with the REST API directly.
I haven't seen any examples of this, but I want to purely interact with Firebase through the backend, and not the frontend with Javascript.
I have auth tokens being minted on my Go backend when a new user is added and then these users are written into a mongo database.
What I want is to be able to get a messaging token for my users, and then add it to their user document in mongo, that'll be used to send messages through the backend.
The reasoning is that we don't want to have to communicate with Firebase on our frontend.
Is this even possible?
If you want to send a message directly to a device with Firebase Cloud Messaging, you will definitely need some information from the client. There is no avoiding following the setup instructions on the client. In particular, you will have to handle the registration token on the client and send it to your backend so it can send the messages.
The Firebase Authentication token will not be useful to you at all for sending messages. FCM doesn't send messages to users - it sends messages to devices (or topics). You will have to figure out for yourself which devices belong to which users.
I am working on a project that might use Firebase only for messaging. The goal is for the following to happen:
App registers with Firebase on startup
App sends Firebase token to our server
Our server sends Firebase messages to all clients via the token from step 2
Note there is no step where the user will log into anything or enter any credentials. I am a little confused if this is possible in a production app, as most Firebase documentation talks extensively about different ways to authenticate, either via username/password, OAuth, etc.
The server will be sending different messages to different clients, but that logic will be handled by the server and not by different types of registration to Firebase. I know Firebase supports groups, but to make a long story short it probably won't be leveraged.
Can all this be done on Firebase? Is GCM a better match for these requirements? I feel like we would be throwing away 95% of Firebase and just trying to force it to simplify the messaging part.
Firebase Authentication does not at all affect the way that Firebase Cloud Messaging works. FCM only cares about the token for the app on the device as a means to target the app for messages. It doesn't care at all if the end user is authenticated by any means. If you want to associate a token to a user somehow, using Firebase Authentication or some other system, that's up to you.
FCM is an evolution of GCM. They are powered by essentially the same components. Using GCM doesn't give you any additional constraints or flexibility than FCM, except for the path to integration in your app.
I've read the document about FCM, but I wonder if I should deploy a FCM server myself. Does the google cloud platform not provide FCM server? Or do I must implemented my own FCM server refering to the official reference implementation, gcm-playgroud?
It depends. (How's that for an answer?)
By "server", I'm assuming you mean, "Code I will be running on the server level to communicate with the FCM service". And honestly, the answer depends on whether or not you need extra functionality that's not supplied by the Firebase Notifications panel.
You can do a lot with Firebase Notifications, including sending scheduled messages, or sending messages to individual users, topics, or Audiences. But that is work that is done manually. If you just want to send the occasional promotional message to your users, you shouldn't need a server.
On the other hand, maybe you've got a messaging app and you want to send a notification to your user anytime they receive a new message. Well, that's clearly something that needs to be automated, and that requires some server-side code. So for that, you will need to set up your own server that communicates with FCM.