I'm struggling to find an answer on if Firebase Cloud Messaging supports sending notifications to Device Groups in the v1 HTTP API.
According to the migration documents, sending to device groups is supported.
Caution: Any apps that use device group messaging must continue to use the legacy API for the management of device groups (creating, updating, etc.). The HTTP v1 can send messages to device groups, but does not support management.
The important part being "HTTP v1 can send messages to device groups"
I'm using the firebase-admin-python SDK, and when sending a single or set of batch messages I get a successful response, but the push notification does not send.
Is sending to device groups actually supported by the SDK in the same way that firebase_admin.messaging.send and firebase_admin.messaging.send_all are? The statement above leads me to believe that they are, but pushes aren't delivering (they do deliver when using the older legacy FCM API)
I assume you mean the token parameter. There's no sparameter named to on Message.
The documentation you're quoting is for the HTTP v1 API. And it might very well support sending to device groups -- although I haven't been able to find any examples to confirm that. But I know for sure that the SDKs (all expect the Node.js SDK) neither expose nor support any functionality for sending to device groups. Docs at https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/send-message outline all the different ways you can send a message using the Python SDK, and it makes no mention of sending to device groups. The Message.token parameter must be given an individual device registration token.
It is however rather strange that the FCM backend does not return an error when passing a device group key as the token. I'd recommend reporting a bug for that.
Related
I'm learning Flutter myself and need some expert guidance on the right way to do what I want.
I would like to allow the user of my Flutter application to securely send some sensitive data (e.g. email, phone number, name etc.) to my PHP based website (with REST API) and then, after some time, I would like to send a reply (e.g. . text) from my website to the sender's device and displaying it on the User's screen.
I suspect I should use Firebase Cloud Messaging for this - am I right?
I found tutorials that explain how to send data from Flutter-> FCM and from PHP(curl)-> FCM. But I can't find the tutorial explaining how to send data from Flutter-> FCM-> PHP?
Firebase Cloud Messaging is typically used to send messages from the server to the application, when the user may not be actively using it. While it can be used to send messages from the client to a server, it is much less common for that.
That's because calling a PHP API from your Flutter app is no different than retrieving any data from the internet, and can be accomplished in a multitude of ways. One of the simpler approaches is documented in Flutter's fetching data from the internet page and uses the http package.
In Urban Airship, when I am composing a notification, I can target specific users by searching for a Urban Airship channel_id (device ID):
I sent from Urban Airship the push notification that I am showing above, and I received it successfully. Now I want to do the same thing, send a push notification to a specific device, but now using the Firebase console. The problem is that in Firebase, in the step where I need to specify the target, it only allows me to choose User segment or topic. I was expecting to see a third option: Target specific users (for sending notifications to one or many specific GCM/FCM device token IDs. So my alternative is to add a GCM/FCM device token ID to a topic and then send the push notification to that topic, which is something that I have successfully done before. Nonetheless, that would be a workaround and not the way I would prefer to do this. Is it possible to send push notifications to specific users (by defining the target GCM/FCM device token IDs) from the Firebase console? Thank you.
UPDATE 1: See how the Firebase console (https://console.firebase.google.com/) only shows User segment and Topic as the Target:
First Step:
Second Step:
Third Step:
By design, the notification feature in the console is for sending out broadcast-type events. Sending user-specific alerts would be more of a programmatic operation done through the API.
For sending test messages, there is a console tool for this, explained here.
Note that it is possible to send a notification to one device by subscribing a device to any topic and sending the notification to that topic in the console (keep in mind topics are public and you can't prevent users from signing up to them; fine for testing most likely).
Another alternative is to send a message via HTTP or curl. Perhaps the best resource for this is the quickstart/messaging example.
On this page they explain Web Push with Service Workers stating
Chrome currently uses Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) as its push service. FCM recently adopted the Web Push protocol. and then explaining Firebase and so on...
Since the Service Worker gives me a unique endpoint and a pubkey, it seems to me that technically it should be possible to use that endpoint directly, without anything additionally - except if Google deliberally forces a registration.
I mean, just send a POST request to that endpoint, sending just the notification data encrypted/authenticated using the pubkey without any "VAPID".
Do I absolutely need a Firebase account or is it possible to access the endpoint directly (without additional registration) if I just want to send a notification to a single device?
It's 2021 and all major browsers implement a push service and support VAPID now. You use a web push library (Javascript, Python, C#,..) of choice.
There is no need to register anywhere.
The technical mechanism in short is this:
You generate two VAPID keys once using the push library. One key is private and one is public.
The public key is used in the javascript as "application server key" when subscribing to the push service of the browser.
If the subscription is successful you receive a subscription object from the browser containing an endpoint and two additional keys.
The endpoint is an address depending on the web browser / manufacturer and the service it is currently using. The endpoints look like (Oct 2021) e.g.
Google Chrome h_tt_ps://fcm.googleapis.com/fcm/send/cz9gl....., Microsoft Edge h_tt_ps://wns2-par02p.notify.windows.com/w/?toke....., Mozilla Firefox h_tt_ps://updates.push.services.mozilla.com/wpush/v2/gAAAAABhaUA....
If your server program has this information (endpoint and keys from subscription object) it can send a push message to the endpoint with the push library. The corresponding service in the web, hosted by the manufacturer sends this to the browser's service on the device.
There is the PushAPI which shall get used.
But it doesn't is supported by every Browser at the moment.
You can find nice examples in the Service Worker Cookbook of Mozilla
Our goal is sending notifications to groups of devices from our backend, and only from server side is possible to know which device should receive the notification.
We've done some attempts with AppCenter because we mostly work with Xamarin iOS/Android/Forms, but now we have the doubt that it's probably better to use directly Firebase API because wider and more powerful.
I see that with new version of API (HTTP V1) is not possible to send a notification to a list of tokens, feature that was available in legacy API using registration_ids parameter (https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/send-message).
Device group name (legacy protocols only)
I cannot use topics because when it's time to send the communication is a server's responsibility to prepare the "mailing list" for notifications.
I was thinking to use device group messaging (https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/android/device-group) but these are part of the legacy api, and I'm not sure if it makes sense/it's possible to use them with new version of API.
Is an option to send a batch of 100-200-500 push notifications each one to only one token? In theory there isn't a limit to notifications which is possible to send, but I'm worried that sending too many of them I could risk to be banned.
Is it better to use legacy API? Also AppCenter (Microsoft) uses legacy API, it's evident because of how the setup works and because from AppCenter's console it's possible to send notifications to a list of tokens, feature unavailable on Firebase's console.
Another person just asked something similar but the answer was to use topics (How to send firebase notification for all user at a time?).
Got here from the link in your comment in my answer here. And just to reiterate my response there, when sending messages to multiple tokens with v1, the suggested approach now is to use Topics Messaging, since registration_ids is not supported.
Is it better to use legacy API?
v1 was described as the more secure, cross platform, future proof way of sending messages to FCM clients. More secure since it uses OAuth2 security model.
However, if your use-case is better with using the legacy API, then I suggest you go ahead with using it.
This page suggests that you should stay with the legacy API if you want to continue to use the multicast feature: https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/migrate-v1
Any apps that use device group messaging or multicast messaging, however, may prefer to wait for future versions of the API. HTTP v1 does not support these features of the legacy API.
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.